The Princess and the Tiger
by Revolation
Summary: Orihime and Chad both find their usefulness diminished during the series of events post-SS arc with the looming threat of the Aizen and his arrancars. Together, they strive to get stronger and to walk with the rest of their nakama instead of behind. Goes full AU in chapter seven. Will be at chapter 29 by end of 2012. Hiatus starts Jan 8th, 2013. Check profile for more details.
1. Return to Normality

This story starts at Chapter 183 and Episode 110 if I recall correctly. The pace picks up as you go along. Thanks to the Beta-ers for this chapter: Codry and Dashita Tichou. Amazing work and insight you guys. I thank you for helping me in my debut story. Check out their stories, "To Break is All I Know" by Codry and "Ritsu Kurosaki" by Dashita Tichou. Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.

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><p>Return to Normality<p>

**September 1st**

**8:00 AM. 30 minutes before school starts.**

Orihime Inoue was in a great mood already this morning. They had headed back from the Soul Society on the 13th of August, but because of the Kotutsu chasing them through the Dangai/Precipice world again, time was shifted and they came out in the real world on the night of August 20th only giving her 11 days to prepare for the new trimester of school. Despite this, she was happy that all the fighting from Soul Society was over along with her regaining a sense of a return to normality even if it was for a short time. She slid open the door to the classroom.

"Hey Tatsuki-chan, Mahana-chan, Michiru-chan!" she said to Tatsuki who was standing up talking to Mahana and Michiru as she saw them.

Tatsuki's eyes instantly brightened as she saw her friend. "Hey Orihime you're back!" said Tatsuki said as she went over to Orihime and hugged her. Michiru and Mahana followed.

"You've been gone so long! I haven't seen you since after Ryō, Mahana and I met up with the rest you at the fireworks festival. Was everything ok at your grandmother's house?" asked Michiru.

"Ehehe it hasn't been _that _long Michiru-chan, but Tatsuki-chan told you guys where I went after all? Well my grandmother is the one who supplies me with money to keep living in my apartment and I like to visit her. She is really nice, you guys should meet her," said Orihime while the others nodded in affirmation.

Technically, it was a psuedo-truth. Orihime had gone to visit her grandmother on the 21st in Yokosuka, but not during the whole time she was gone. Tatsuki had sensed Orihime's presence fade as if it were behind a wall during the time she went to the soul society, so when she had come back Tatsuki sensed that as well, but she didn't really know how to ask Orihime why her "presence" had faded. It seemed like a weird question to ask.

"Uhh? Have any of you guys seen Ryō?" asked Orihime as she looked around the slowly filling classroom, wondering where the sarcastic athletic bookworm was. She was always fun to talk to whether she realized it or not.

"Typical Ryō," said Tatsuki while smirking. "She's one of the track team's fastest sprinters and yet always gets to school so late."

"Eh, she's probably reading something like she always does. Whenever she does that she walks super slow," explained Mahana.

Orihime looked out the window to see if Ryō was coming, before noticing Chad had entered the room. He exchanged a few greetings with some of the guys he usually hung out with as well as one of his band members before putting his guitar down next to his seat. After making sure it wouldn't fall over, he moved towards the spot where he usually stood before class. That was when he saw Orihime standing there.

"Good morning Sado-kun," said Orihime cheerfully when she saw him looking at her.

"Hey Inoue," said Chad said as he leaned against the wall next to the window.

A _normal_ person after this point would be at a loss for what to say next thus creating an awkward silence as Chad wasn't exactly the most talkative person and came across as hard to talk with to some of the students. Though the fact that he was still facing Orihime while leaning against the wall meant the conversation had just begun. Not to mention the fact that Orihime wasn't what one would call _normal _and could basically strike up a conversation with anybody, even a rock if she was in one of her overactive imagination kind of moods. She even talked to herself sometimes which was slightly ironic in more ways than one considering the existence of her Shun Shun Rikka with them having different personalities and being part of herself.

"So what did you do the rest of summer Sado-kun?"

"Not much actually. I caught up with the band members and…," Chad paused for a while, "that's...pretty much it," he finished.

"Hmmm. Sado-kun, I get the feeling you're leaving a lot out of that," said Orihime with an innocent questioning look on her face. A small hint of a smirk could be seen on Chad's face.

"Sado, I can't believe your still doing that 'Too lazy to finish your stories' thing," said another voice causing Orihime to turn around to the recognizable voice.

"Yo Ishida," stated Chad simply.

"Ah, Good morning Ishida-kun. Sado-kun why didn't you tell me Ishida-kun was behind me?" asked Orihime.

"I just got in the classroom and walked over here and besides, Chad's not the type to shout to me across the room as soon as I walk in. In fact since it's so early in the morning I'd be annoyed at anyone who made that much noise," said Uryū Ishida matter-of-factly as he pushed his glasses up and took his seat next to the window.

"Hmm." Chad affirmed.

Orihime was about to say how she didn't sense Uryū's reiatsu coming at all and playfully accuse him of sneaking up on her, but then remembered that he hadn't…'been himself'…..so she decided to change the subject in that split second, but Uryū and his skills of perception hadn't missed the change in emotions on Orihime's face.

"Eh? You two aren't much of morning people at all are you?" asked Orihime trying to contain her laughter that the two seemed so easily annoyed in the morning.

"Are there even such people Inoue-san?" asked Uryū with a completely serious face. Chad's face was no different and they looked at Orihime together as if they sincerely wanted to know if people could actually be happy and fully awake in the morning. This was one of Orihime's rare awkward silences.

"O-Of course there are!" said Orihime incredulously, "I am obviously one of them!" Orihime said posing with her hands on her hips and smiling with her eyes closed and head tilted up to the ceiling as if saying she was proud of it causing Chad and Uryū to sweatdrop. She continued trying to tilt her head back until the back of her head hit the window with a really loud thud.

"Orihime are you ok?" asked Tatsuki from a few feet away with Michiru and Mahana exchanging knowing glances.

"Y-Yeah I'm fine Tatsuki-chan. Don't worry," said Orihime rubbing the back of her head.

"You need to be more careful," said Tatsuki with a worried face which quickly turned into a smirk. "I thought your clumsy-streak was finally starting to ease up," she said teasingly, causing Orihime to laugh.

"Yeah, but I think I'm going to calm down now and join the "Gloomy-Type Morning People" club with Ishida-kun and Sado-kun now. I think hitting my head like that is going to give me a headache," said Orihime making a overly forced scowling face similar to the one she had used to impersonate Ichigo in the past to emphasize her point that she was gloomy.

"Wh-what Inoue-san? We aren't gloomy we just prefer less excitement in the morning right after waking u-", Uryū stopped as he saw the window Orihime's head had hit and his face turned white. There was a crack in the window. This wasn't the effect of the school having cheap windows. Those were new high quality windows. This was none other than the power of Orihime's hard head.

Combining that attribute with some of her clumsiness had created some accidental head butts that Ichigo, Chad, and he had been on the receiving end of back in the Soul Society. It _was not_ a pleasant memory. Chad took notice of the window as well and turned away with similar flashbacks probably going through his mind.  
>A depressing aura clouded in over Chad and Uryū.<p>

"Whats up with you guys? I was just joking! Do you see what I mean?" said Orihime pointing an accusatory finger and with the expression on her face to match. "Gloomy!" she said to answer the question for herself gesturing with both her hands towards Uryū and Chad. This snapped Uryū out of his melancholic daze as he sighed and admitted defeat.

"Alright, alright Inoue-san," the Quincy said waving his hands back and forth. "I'll admit I'm sometimes 'gloomy' in the morning….Well, for your standards anyway, but…today isn't one of them." He the last sentence with a smirk which Orihime reciprocated with a bigger smile.

"Hmm. Well that's good. I know my grandma in Yokosuka is a horrible morning person based on the fact that she never wants to wake up. Sometimes she stays in bed so long that I sometimes have to fight her to drag her out of bed even though I always lose and I even thought she had died one of the times she didn't wake up, but in the end she was just playing dead to mess with me or something like that," said Orihime nonchalantly causing Uryū and Chad to immediately sweatdrop.

"_Inoue's grandmother must be as…..amusing as Inoue herself...,"_ thought Uryū to himself picturing Inuoe fighting someone to get them out of bed.  
><em><br>"Wait… she said she always loses? Didn't she tell me she was black belt level in soul society? She even beat those shinigami up by herself so we could take their kimonos and disguise ourselves...," Uryū_ thought nervously.

"I tell her to stop watching TV so late at night so she can wake up in the morning, but she says mornings are for orange-juice addicts and it made me wonder if people can actually get addicted to something like orange-juice. So later when I went to look into refrigerator and she had like 3 cartons of orange juice in there! I thought it was really funny, but when I asked her about it she said she didn't know where they came from and asked me why I brought them and if I was trying to make her into a 'juice-convert'. She has a weird way with describing things."

Orihime continued her trademark rambling and use of a lot of hand gestures as Tatsuki, Mahana, and Michiru looked on with amused looks.

"Leave it to Orihime to strike up a conversation with the quietest people in class. It's easy for her to make friends with people after all," said Mahana.

"Yeah, was she always that close with those two or is she just making conversation?" asked Michiru.

"Well, Ishida and Orihime are in the handicrafts club together," said Tatsuki suggesting a reason.

At that moment Ichigo walked in the room with Keigo and Mizuiro flanking him from behind.

"Good morning Ichigo!" said Orihime.

"Yo," said Chad.

"Morning. Looks like your hair's as messy as always," taunted Uryū to Ichigo's annoyance.

Orihime then went back to her story where she caught her grandma drinking out a huge carton of orange juice at 12:00 AM motioning with her hands the size of the carton and how that time was technically morning, thus making her an undercover morning person, just in the early morning hours instead of the later hours where everybody else wakes up.

Meanwhile, Keigo was in utter shock and confusion at the scene.

"Ichigo!, Ichigo! That combination!" he said as he said motioned towards the three near the window. "Don't you think it's a bit weird? Why is Chad with Inoue-san and more importantly Ishida! Were they this close before summer? It's like Beauty and the Beast plus glasses! What happened between them over summer?" asked Keigo with way too much emotion and decibels for the newly formed 'Easily irritated in the morning club'.

"No and nothing happened," Ichigo answered simply as he went to join his 'nakama' symbolically in their apparent 'newly formed club'. Though Keigo missed that the symbolic reference was being applied to him.

All of this while comically giving Keigo the cold shoulder much to his dismay. He complained about being lonely while ironically ignoring that Mizuiro was right behind him.

"Tch. As soon as Kurosaki arrived, it got noisy," said Ryō with an apathetic scowl sitting at her desk reading a magazine without looking up.

_"Maybe she should join the club," _thought Tatsuki to herself.

"Eh! Ryō when did you get here?!" asked Michiru.

"Just got here," replied Ryō.

"_Wait a sec_," Tatsuki thought to herself. "_Not only does Ryō hang out with her, but they are also neighbors and so she walks to school with 'that person'. So if Ryō is here than that must mean so i-_"

"GOOOD MORNING HIIIME!" shouted Chizuru as she interrupted and provided an answer to Tatsuki's thoughts at the same time. The enthused redhead groped Orihime's chest from behind as the girl finished up her story. Her frantic lunge ended only in her face being impacted by the heel of a shoe. Tatsuki's to be exact. It sent her careening a few feet away.

"Ahh looks like our Tsukkomi is going strong even though summer vacation is over," said Chizuru with a grin while getting up off the floor.

"I thought I told you, this isn't a Tsukkomi!" shouted an annoyed Tatsuki.

Chizuru and Tatsuki continued their humorous talk for a little bit, then Ichigo began talking to Tatsuki after Chizuru went to her seat. Orihime finally finished her story to Uryū and Chad after getting interrupted and distracted so many times. Uryū began getting materials out of his bag as he knew Ochi-sensei would be there any moment. Seeing the opportunity, Orihime began talking to Chad again to revive the original conversation she had wanted to have.

"Sado-kun," said Orihime in a serious tone that quickly got Chad's attention.

"What I really wanted to know when I asked you what you did the rest of summer after we got back was if you did any more training or not?"

"Why would you want to know that Inoue?" Chad was confused and caught off guard by the spontaneous question and sudden change of demeanor in his classmate.

Orihime's demeanour changed back. "Oh, I was just wondering becau-"

"GOOD MORNING! Take your seat brats!" shouted Ochi-sensei with a smile on her face in her usual easy-going voice as she walked into the class, slid the door shut, and began taking roll .

Chad quickly went to his seat right behind Ichigo and Orihime went to her seat two seats behind Uryū next to the second window. She begun getting the assignments they had over summer out of her bag. She had managed to finish all of it while she had been in Yokosuka. It had been daunting at first. She had so much to do and so little time due to the time-consuming Soul Society and time-distorting Dangai/Precipice world, before she had one of her brilliant ideas and brought out her Rikka for ultimate multitasking. Since the Rikka were part of her soul she had the idea they could all probably read different things at the same time and then she would get all of the information much to Tsubaki's chagrin.

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><p><strong>August 23rd<br>5:00 PM**

"You brought us out for _WHAT_ WOMAN!" shouted Tsubaki at the closed door while rubbing his newly injured nose from the slamming door.

"Tsubaki," started Lily. "She said it five times already, she needs us to help her with her homewo-" but was cut off by Tsubaki.

"Stop right there and listen to what you just said," said Tusbaki with a uncharacteristically yet noticably forced calm voice.

"HOMEWORK!" he shouted again.

"Actually I only said 'homewo-' since you cut me off Mr. Manners. You shouldn't put words in other's mouths," grumbled Lily under her breath.

"Am I the only one mad that this is one of the rare times we get called and it isn't even for fighting?" said Tsubaki looking at Shun'ō. Shun'ō simply smirked to Tsubaki's ire.

Lily responded with a smug look on her face, "Tsubaki, don't try to make it sound like you have our interests at heart. We all know that what you mean by 'fighting' is offense which is understandable with Koten Zanshun being your ability and all. Add that with the fact that most of the time when we are used, only Shun'o and Ayame are used for Sōten Kisshun and then Hinagiku, Baigon, and I for Santen Kesshun," she continued in a teasing tone while gesturing towards Baigon and Hinagiku; alluding to Orihime's pacifist nature.

"It's nothing to be upset over though, really. Just consider yourself as 'the ultimate last resort-final technique'," said Lily. It was so easy to mess with Tsubaki.

At that moment, Shun'ō speed blitzed Tsubaki from behind and pulled his bandana tight over his mouth to prevent him from making an inevitable heated retort towards Lily.

Struggling to contain Tsubaki and talking over his shouts of protest, Shun'ō continued the conversation. "Actually Lily, what I think Tsubaki meant by fighting is to use all of us whenever we are in a actual fight like when we first were awakened," said the top-knotted Rikka yanking on Tsubaki's bandana cloth.

"Even so, it's not like every fight or situation is the same. Not all of our abilities are needed for every situation we could run into. Like I said the most used are you and Ayame for healing," explained Lily.

At hearing her name, Ayame peaked out from under the red hood made of her appendages from where she and Shun'ō were before he went over to subdue Tsubaki. "Um..yeah, well as long as we are around Kurosaki-kun and the others, I'm sure not only will Shun'ō and I be used, but all of us. Even Tsubaki." said Ayame quietly.

Just then Tsubaki broke free of Shun'ō. "That's just it though! We shouldn't need to rely on Kurosaki or anyone else for our own development. We should be able to fight together because we want to fight!" he shouted.

"Agreed. Though there is a difference between relying only on yourself and shouldering your burdens alone, or depending fully on somebody else and not believing in yourself, as opposed to middle solution of being confident in yourself, but not shouldering burdens all by yourself," said Baigon breaking his silence up to that point.

"Oh? Poignant as always Baigon," said Hinagiku.

"Tch..yeah I guess you are right," said Tsubaki to what Baigon had said in a rare tone of acceptance. Baigon being the one of the only Rikka who even rarely received such a tone. He then turned to Hinagiku.

"'Poignant as always'? What are you some kind of artistic critic now Patchy?" questioned Tsubaki. "Why don't you go write some poetry or something and let the leaders discuss the battle strategies without distractions," he taunted with a grin behind his bandana.

A vein pulsed on Hinagiku's forehead. "What? I can't even use basic vocabulary around a simpleton like you and exactly who are you referring to as leaders? Certainly not yo-WAIT WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT MY EYEPATCH?" Hinagiku raged.

Shun'ō face palmed and Ayame retreated into the hood of her dress. Baigon looked indifferent yet entertained if you looked close enough and Lily looked highly amused with a full grin on her face and crossed arms as she floated in the air.

Tsubaki continued. "I'm asking what's the point of that eye patch? Does it even do anything or have any special abilities because there's no way you're wearing it because you lost an eye. That doesn't even make any sense and why does it stretch into a horn above your head? You don't do any stabbing as you aren't offensive like me. It's almost as pointless as Ms. Four-Eyes over there he said pointing his thumb at Lily who was caught off guard.

"Don't play dumb! You know good and well that these are goggles, not glasses!" said Lily adjusting her transparent yellow goggles as if she was defending them, "Do you not see the swimsuit theme going on here? _You're_ just trying to point out other people to compensate for your goofy bandana cloth which is what _really_ serves no point!"

At this point, Baigon, Lily and Ayame kind of went and sat down on the table next to the closed door to the room that Orihime had went inside to get her books.

Tsubaki was surprisingly holding back his comebacks during Lily's rant despite the vein pulsing on his forehead, though when Lily brought up the bandana paradox you could see multiple pulsing veins form on his face at the same time to Hinagiku's amusement.

"….and you say how there's no way Hinagiku losing a eye could be the reason for him having having a eyepatch horn, but why do you even have scars? It's not as if you got them during the fight with Jidanbō's brother in the soul society. You had them as soon as we awakened!"

Tsubaki calmed down as the edges of a smug smirk appeared on his face above the bandana, causing Lily and Hinagiku to exchange confused glances before looking back at Tsubaki.

"Eh? Firstly, how do you even remember that no name scum Jirōbō Ikkanzaka? Secondly Hinagiku actually has more scars than me and looks like an alien with elf ears to match and if those things are goggles and not glasses, then they must be polarized goggles Lily," said Tsubaki. While some of the other Rikka liked messing with Tsubaki, Tsubaki liked messing with Lily and Hinagiku the most. They _were_ the easiest to mess with after all.

"Polarized? Why would anyone ha-" but Lily was cut off by another.

"Helloooo! Down here!" Shun'ō called out from his spot on the table next to Ayame with his eyes closed, hands on the back of his head head and usual grin. "Alright, it's my turn to play! Firstly Tsubaki, how can he be 'no name scum' if you remembered his full name and even got the pronunciation right? Secondly, are you guys really asking questions like that? I'm pretty sure we all know why we ended up looking the way we do."

"Way to ruin the jokes you killjoy!" shouted Tsubaki as he zoomed over towards Shun'ō and covered his mouth as payback for what he did earlier with his bandana.

"That's my job!" Shun'ō said muffled through Tsubaki's hands while laughing trying to get him off.

The door opened and Orihime came outside the room.

"Woah you guys have been outside the whole time? You could've come inside you know..."

"It's because you ran in and closed the door in our _faces_ woman!" shouted Tsubaki kicking Orihime in her own face as payback.

"Oh, haha I guess I forgot you guys were following me since I had you out all day today and I'm used to just having you in the hairpins. Plus I guess I thought you would just fly through the door since you're like spirits…and Tsubaki-kun, I said you could call me 'Orihime', you know? Why do you always act so unfamiliar?" asked Orihime comically snatching Tsubaki out the air with ninja precision with a pout on her face.

"Wha- Let go of me wom-HMmmMMmm".

"Now I know you guys are probably wondering why I've had you out all day?" asked Orihime pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table ironically ignoring Tsubaki whose mouth was covered by Orihime's thumb.

The Rikka sans Tsubaki all gathered around Orihime.

"It's because while in Soul Society I…well, we learned that a Shinigami's zanpakutō is a spirit inside of them and part of their soul. And how the closer they get to the spirit, the stronger and more coordinated they get right as they fight together right?

"There's more to it than that, but in general that's correct," said Shun'ō as he flew in and landed on Tsubaki's head without a second thought.

"Right, and Shinigami have inner worlds can where they can talk to their zanpakutō any time if they want depending on how close they are with it and sometimes they can talk without even going to the inner world. That's what Isane-san told me during the time we were helping heal people together in the 4th Division after the betrayal of those three captains," Orihime continued.

"So while I don't really have a inner world or anything like that, I can still bring you guys out anytime I want and I could talk to all of you from the very start unlike a zanpakutō. So I figure the same rules apply in that the closer I get to you, my powers being you all, the stronger I will become and the more in sync we are, the more we can grow. Not to mention getting used to having you all out for a long time can help me so as not to tire out easily in a fight because of reiatsu loss or something like that."

"Wow, I have to say, I am impressed you've thought that far through Orihime," praised Shun'ō.

"Well at the start, you helped me learn how to use you and the rest of the Rikka Shun'ō, and now I feel I have to start contributing and trying to lead myself. We've already mastered doing our techniques without the kotodama, but I know I can get much stronger than I am now. There's no way I've reached my limit of all possible growth even if I am just a human!"

"In Soul Society, even though everyone said I was useful I felt there were times when I was just dead weight and I hate that feeling," said Orihime. She found it easy to voice out her deeper feelings to her Rikka since they were part of her after all.

"I want to work so that I won't be a burden to Kurosaki-kun or anyone and most of all, never feel that feeling again!"

Lily and Hinagiku looked pumped up by Orihime's speech as energetic flames appeared in their eyes.

"YEAH! You can totally get stronger Orihime! We're just getting started! It's barely been two months since you first awakened us and you've already come this far! That's amazing!" said an enthused Lily.

"She's right! And that's the spirit Orihime! There's no limit to what we can do if you just believe in yourself!" shouted Hinagiku.

Shun'ō looked on grinning but was suddenly pushed off by a writhing Tsubaki who escaped Orihime's grasp.

If Tsubaki was moved by Orihime's speech he didn't know how to show it as he wasn't good at conveying emotions besides anger.

"Women are you trying to kill me! Or did you forget I was in your hand?" Tsubaki said with giant throbbing fingerprints on his face.

"We all know you are just saying this stuff to get us to do your stupid schoolwork for you-GHAAH" said Tsubaki as he was kicked in the face by a ticked off Lily.

"Actually Tsubaki this 'schoolwork' thing is part of my plan," retorted Orihime. Ayame poked her head completely out of her hood to show interest at hearing this.

"It may seem ….um what's the word…oh ok I got it! Unorthodox! It may seem unorthodox, but this is just a test. You see, since you all are part of my soul and I'm able to talk to you all so easily, our bond is stronger than even an average Shinigami and their zanpakutō, if I can be compared to a Shinigami. So I figure that if we all worked together on this schoolwork with each of us covering different things that I could learn faster through all of you guys…um sort of like a shared consciousness thing. Then we could develop that further for other things like fighting," she explained, placing her fist in her palm in finality.

"Hmm I never thought of something like that. We are like separate personalities, yet still part of you and we haven't really tested the limits of this ability like for example how far apart can each of us be from each other?...Hmm...Yeah, you guys are right," said Shun'ō with growing enthusiasm.

"We still have alot to learn but this idea of yours should be a good start Orihime!" beamed Shun'ō.

"Yeah….whatever sounds cool I guess," said Tsubaki with his barely noticeable rare smirk of approval thanks to his bandana. Despite his seeming approval, what really won him over was when he heard the word "fighting".

Ayame still had her head outside the hood and had a smile on her face and Baigon was nodding in approval with a smile on his face as well.

"Alright let's get started!" shouted Orihime imitating Ochi-sensei as she opened up several books of various subjects and placed them at different points around the table. Then she looked at all the Rikka with a cartoonish sly look and suddenly said, "1!,2!,3! NOT IT FOR MATH!"

"'1,2,3 not it'? Tch, does it looks like we're playing 'tag' woman?" asked Tsubaki in a bored voice, but failed to catch on until it was too late.

"NOT IT!" screamed Shun'ō, Baigon, and Lily simultaneously in a rushed panic.

"NOOOOT IT!" shouted Hinagiku.

"NOT IT! NOT IT! NOT IT!" shouted Ayame from inside her hood where she had retreated after Orihime started the game.

"Well Tsubaki, looks like you have to study the maaaath," teased Lily.

Tsubaki went wide-eyed in realization.

"WHAT? NO! I want a recount! I was cheated! You are supposed to count to 5 not 3! That's basic knowledge woman!" shouted Tsubaki to no avail as the Rikka all fled to the various stations Orihime had set up.

"Eh? Don't worry Tsubaki. I'll help you out with the math anyway," chirped a happy Orihime.

"What? That's even worse.." a defeated Tsubaki said under his breath, sulking as he flew over to the dreaded textbook.

* * *

><p><strong>September 1st<br>8:31 AM. The school day has now started.**

Orihime smiled at the memory as she finished getting out all of her materials with that same math book being the last. Then frowned when she remembered what happened when she called the Rikka back into hairpins and tried to access any possible memories of things she knew the various Rikka had studied, but was dismayed when they ended up feeling like faint memories from a dream. She even had to concentrate extremely hard to recall even those details at first when she recalled the Rikka.

Though at the same time, she was still happy that her theory had even been correct. She could barely recall bits and pieces as it was, and ended up just doing all the work herself while still activating the Rikka out of her hairpins to continue getting used to having them out. She hadn't really expected it to be perfect on the first try anyway and didn't know how exactly to make it work, but she just had to keep trying.

She smiled again at the memory of her grandma passing by while she had the Rikka out, wondering why Orihime was talking to herself and told her "This is what orange juice does to the mind!".

Occhi-sensei had just finished taking roll.

"AH! Everyone is here today! Nice! Very nice," said Ochi-sensei. "Well, Ooshima and Sorumachi aren't here, but they don't count because they're slackers and bad students. Eh, I'm sure they're healthy, not sick or anything and probably having fun somewhere," said Misato Ochi matter of factly.

The students still had yet to get used to their teacher's reactions to certain things.

"'They're slackers so they don't count'? First time I heard a teacher say something like that." "Shouldn't she be more worried about her students?" "Is that what a teacher should be saying?" various kids from across the class murmured.

"Good news everyone. Today there's a new transfer student!" announced Ochi-sensei. A few kids perked up at this while others like Ichigo and Ryō didn't even look up.

Orihime smirked again at the return of the sense of normality of being in class again and getting random transfer students before she heard a loud screaming voice and saw that Uryū heard it too. It was coming from Ichigo.

"HOLLOW! HOLLOW! HOLLOW!"

"WHAT THE?" shouted Ichigo holding the source of the noise. It was the strange badge Captain Ukitake had given him.

Mizuiro asked Ichigo what was wrong to which ichigo replied, "Um… my stomach!" before Chad asked, "Is it a hollow?" and Ichigo answered "Yeah", got up and saw Ochi-sensei hadn't noticed the commotion and was actively looking for the transfer student outside the classroom door. He and took the opportunity to run away saying he was going to the bathroom.

Orihime and Chad got up and followed with the same lame excuse since they didn't have time to make up a better one. Once they got outside the school they saw Ichigo had simply deposited his body in plain sight and was running across the track field next to the side of the building their classroom was on.

"Inoue, I'll put Ichigo's body in a safe spot, you go ahead. I'll catch up," said Chad.

"Right!" replied Orihime.

Chad caught up in no time.

"Hey Sado-kun, do you really think Kurosaki-kun needs our help?" asked Orihime.

"If he does we'll be there and if he doesn't we'll be there anyways," said Chad.

"I guess you are right. Better safe than sorry," said Orihime as they closed in on the hollow's spiritual pressure around the corner and saw Ichigo unwrapping Zangetsu facing a hollow with a pig-like mask when he turned around.

"Huh you guys followed me?" asked Ichigo confused.

Orihime and Chad sweat dropped.

"_He didn't even sense us coming," _they thought.

"That's right we came to help you out Kurosaki-kun!" proclaimed the Rikka wielder.

"Wha—but this is just a weak hollow! It's even weaker than the one that attacked my house and hurt Rukia. Everyone doesn't need to leave class for every low level hollow that comes," said Ichigo gesturing his arms and pointing at the hollow that had just spawned pulsing veins on its forehead from Ichigo's comments.

The hollow jumped into the air screaming "BEEF!" and began shooting small energy blasts which Ichigo blocked with Zangetsu.

"So the hollows are still around Karakura after all," stated Orihime in contemplation.

"Yeah," said Chad. "As long as there are humans there will always be hollows."

"I just wonder where they are always coming from?" asked Orihime.

"PORK! BEEK!" The hollow said as it saw the blasts weren't working and came down to crush Ichigo itself, but he dodged out the way and jumped into the air, arcing Zangestu in a position to swing down.

"Beef?, Pork?, make up your mind!" shouted Ichigo as he swung Zangetsu clean down the middle of the hollow's mask destroying the hollow as it disappeared and went to Soul Society.

"Now as I was saying," stated as Ichigo regained his footing. "It's just a normal hollow. I can handle these on my own. You guys didn't need to sneak out with me or anything."

"Yeah, but I've always wanted to sneak out of school using, 'I have to go to the bathroom' as an excuse," said Orihime jokingly.

"I think that's stretching that low a level of an excuse too far Inoue," said Chad.

"Hmm.. Now that think of it, where is Ishida?" asked Ichigo looking around.

"Um…Ishida-kun hasn't been doing too well," said Orihime in a hesitant voice.

"Huh? Really?" asked Ichigo as if genuinely surprised.

"Yeah, he's been like that since before we left Soul Society," she continued.

"Huh? Chad did you notice anything?" asked Ichigo.

"No," he replied.

"I don't think he wanted you guys to find out or anyone for that matter. He's the type that he doesn't want others to know that type of thing," said Orihime.

"What? Then why are you telling us then?" said Ichigo, confused once again.

"Woah you're right!" Orihime said suddenly embarrassed with her hand covering her mouth.

"What am I going to do now?" asked Orihime as she basically began freaking out.

This caused Ichigo to sort of freak out himself, trying to calm her down.

"Huh! Wait Inoue, we'll just pretend like we didn't hear anything! Alright?" said Ichigo in an assuaging tone.

"Really?" said Orihime as if the thought didn't cross her mind and relief crossed her face. Chad looked amused by the scene and to the surprise of the others started another conversation himself to change the mood as they walked back to class all while neither of them noticed a figure hovering upside down in the sky drinking from a upside down water bottle.

The man had a blonde hair with a haricut that resembled a bowl cut, but was different in style with the bangs in the front cut more. He wore the casual school uniform of Karakura High reserved for spring and summer time; just a normal dress shirt and grey pants. However, it was customized with a tie and when he took a sip of water, a tongue ring could vaguely be seen in his mouth along with slightly protruding teeth.

"Kurosaki Ichigo, huh?" said the stranger as he took in the scene below him.

* * *

><p><strong>OMAKE:<strong>

"Tsubaki!" Orihime called out the Rikka and only him alone as he appeared out of the hairpin.

"What do you want woman?" said Tsubaki.

"Huh? Are you going to ask that every time I call you out? Even in the middle of a battle?"

"I'd know whether we are in battle or not woman and stop avoiding the question!"

"Oh yeah I called you out since I want to practice Koten Zanshun some more."

_"Hmm? Finally some real training, instead of that psychic garbadge she was trying to pull before."_

"Would it be easier to increase your strength or speed first?" Orihime asked innocently?

"The speed of course," answered Tsubaki .

"_, but speed doesn't matter if I can't cut through anything," _thought Tsubaki remembering the battle against the 4th seat punk from the 7th division in soul society where he had been injured. It hadn't mattered how slow or fast he was going, if he was strong enough combined with killing intent he would have cut straight through that guy's zanpaktou when he tried to slice him.

"Aright then!" said Orihime causing Tsubaki to look back up at her.

"We'll definitely increase strength first since speed would be the obvious thing to do! Then eventually strength and speed at the same time one we get more advanced!"

"Now your speaking my language woman! said Tsubaki, though he sweatdropped as he silently questioned her reasoning of doing it just for the sake 'not doing the obvious thing' instead of having a better or more noble reason.

"Right so I plan to cut through things of increasing hardness and densities to see what the limit is for your cutting power. Then we can improve from there," said Orihime forming a first a slamming it down on her palm.

"No need for that woman, I can cut through anything if you want me to! Get the hardest, toughest things you can find!"

Hikaru obaa-san had just came back from the local grocery store with some pretty ironic orange beverages along with other food for cooking for her grandaughter's crazy tastes. She sure was glad to see her granddaughter again after so long, not that she would admit it anyway. It was horrible what happened to Sora, and she hadn't even gotten to Karakura until a day later after he had died. It was so nice to see Orihime had grown into such a nice young lady, but she grew up so fast.  
>She turned the key to open the door and pulled to her surprise as the door came apart as if it was split completely in half. Hikaru's eyes widened in shock.<p>

"What the…! That's sure is _some _omen!" She walked inside and found almost everything had been split completely in half as her eyes twitched.

"Okay. This is just a dream. There's no way I can get this many bad omens in one day. One week maybe, but never a day. I'm going to walk down the street and come back and everything will be '_whole'_ again and not '_half',_" she said as she backed up out of the house slowly..then turning away and running away screaming "I'm not senile!" to some kids who were staring at her who always thought she was crazy.

Orihime popped out from behind the door-frame from where she was hiding.

"Oh man! Obaa-chan came home early! Shun'ō, Ayame, come on we need to do some rapid rejection quick!" said the frantic girl.

"Hmm, it should be easy rejecting all the damage to this stuff since it is all physical objects and not made of spiritrons(reishi) and on top of that was cut by our own reiatsu. Let's go Ayame and heal all of this with the kotodama to get it done faster."

"Right" answered Ayame softly.

Hikaru obaa-san finally came back to a nicely whole door and nervously opened it to a home that looked shockingly cleaner than it was before and saw Orihime sitting at the counter.

"Oh hey obaa-chan, do you want some red bean paste** and orange juice?" asked Orihime as she got up and helped her with the rest of her bags.

Hikaru's face immediately squinted. Usually only older people ate red bean paste, but this girl loved it.

"Eh. Sure, why not?" she said smiling at her granddaughter.  
>===================================================<p>

**Author's Note:**  
><strong>Chapter Started: Sunday, July 31st, afternoon<strong>  
><strong>Chapter Finished: Friday, August 12, 2011, 6:56:02 PM<strong>  
><strong>Revisions: July 31st-August 12th. October 1st, 2011. January 6th, 2013(minor edits with changing Uryuu to Uryū and Ryo to Ryō)<strong>

Finished first chapter is finally finished!  
>This is my first time writing any kind of fanfiction for any site or even just in general, and I don't know how others do it. This is a lot of work, but I have a story to tell, and I hope to eventually get it all told, though because it is so time consuming, I am going to write a lot of chapters ahead of time. The story should follow the timeline but then eventually get AU. You could say it's AU now, but it's only AU in the sidestory with Hikaru and Orihime helping Isane heal people in the 4th division. Oh and the reason Hikaru is from Yokosuka is because that's the place I stayed at when I went to Japan at the end of 2010. It's really beautiful and was just what I expected from the first place I visited in Japan.<p>

I wanted to write this because; there are barely any Orihime and Chad stories that focus on their development and instead focus on some crack pairing or are just Ulqi-hime stories(I use to think it was a crack pairing until I saw the power of the fandom and got scared. Lol). Especially with Orihime. Don't get me started on the drought of stories with the shun shun rikka even having dialogue. There's so much comedic potential with those guys.

While writing this chapter I was looking for more inspiration and found a story by debbiechan of the "bleachness" live journal community featuring the Rikka called "Shun Shun Rikka Does the Math" and it's on this site as well.

I also imagined how the story of Bleach would be if they developed further because in my opinion, Orihime and Chad kind of got left behind in terms of development in the actual Bleach plot in terms of fighting.

Sure Orihime did improve a lot. She went from not being able to do her abilities without kotodama to doing them without kotodama and increasing her abilities in each technique. Her shield went from being broken by Yammy to stopping Segunda Etapa Ulquirorra for at least a second. Her range from how far away she could cast the healing shield seemed to go up along with the size of which she could make it along with the ability to restrain people inside the shield as shown with Ichigo burning his hand when trying to escape it.  
>She went from taking hours to heal Jidanbō to healing the arm of Grimmjow, an arrancar's(which like Visoreds in the case of ichigo, has been proven to be harder to heal because of conflicting reiatsus) arm in only a couple seconds to even bringing people including arrancars at that back from the dead(Loly and the shinigami guards in the dangai that Ulq killed). So her healing shield has dramatically improved exponentially. It's just that people don't realize how much Orihime improved in the plot of Bleach.<p>

Then Chad increased the abilities of his right arm before realizing it was a defensive arm and progressing it to the next stage along with getting a new offesnive arm and fighting on par with a ex-espada without sonido or any high speed movement.

Though I still imagine that they have barely touched the surface of their potential and have potential for rapid growth like Ichigo as Chad was already around more than VC level when he fought the ex-espada and he had just gotten his powers no less than 3 months earlier. Plus he's just Chad.

I like imagining Chad and Orihime in fights a lot with the powers I imagine for them. So I plan to bring some of that to anyone who comes across this story.

This is my first chapter to my first story ever so please for my sake be brutal in the reviews. Tell me thing you didn't like, kind of didn't like, hate with a passion, etc, but also tell me what you like, love, want me to improve on, want to see, or any questions for the future of the story in general. Was it boring? Stale dialogue? Too long? Too short? I need your help. I can't do it alone.  
>(Just going to say right now, I pretty bad at punctuation for dialogue so I know I made tons of mistakes there).<br>Stay tuned for next chapter. Next chapter, both Chad and Orihime's point of view on things will be featured. **Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.**  
>============================================<p>

**Random Notes:  
><strong>- **Orihime loves red bean paste as stated by Kubo himself. She also is a black belt level in karate and has a comically hard head.

I think during the series, Uryū calls Chad both "Chad" and "Sado-kun" or "Sado". I also make very subtle references throughout the chapter to subtle things in Bleach for example. Mahana says how easy it is for Orihime to make friends and how it was with the quietest people in class is a reference to Bleach chapter 70 where Ichigo remarks the same thing and points out how it is the opposite for Uryū and Chad. There are lots more references throughout the chapter from where Orihime, Uryū, and Chad sit, to mixing dialogue from different translations of the manga along with dub and sub dialogue from the anime and adding some original dialogue on top of that.


	2. Return to Anomaly

Author's Note at bottom as always. Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc. I Don't own Bleach, Tite Kubo does.

* * *

><p>Return to Anomaly<p>

**September 2****nd****  
>8:31 AM. Ochi-sensei had finished taking roll.<strong>

"Alright, everyone is here besides those two slackers again. Hmm. That's almost suspicious but not really if you think about it," said the strange teacher causing the aura of the students who heard to shift.

"OK, so good morning everyone, I want to announce that the transfer student I thought was here yesterday, had to suddenly leave yesterday, but hopefully when I open the door today they'll still be here," said Ochi-sensei with a tinge of comedic nervousness at the end of her sentence as she went to her desk.

The class phone rang and she answered it. "Moshi-moshi. Yeah? Ok," she said as she hung up the phone.

"That's the office saying they are coming now. They should be here any minute," said Ochi sensei.

"Meanwhile, all of you slackers get your homework and report you had to do over summer out. You thought we were finished with those didn't you?" said Ochi-sensei to the groans her students.

"Oh what's that beautiful music I hear?" said Ochi to the silence of the classroom.

"Man, you guys are a tough crowd. Are you sure you're all hot blooded teenagers?" asked Ochi only acting like she was dismayed at her joke's failure.

At this some responses were heard in the room.

"What does being 'hot-blooded' have to do with her dumb joke?" "How exactly are groans from tired teenagers in the morning, 'beautiful music'. There's no joking about something that serious and grievous."  
>"Why did she act like we were done with the report yesterday and that we didn't have to turn it in? Now I don't have it today so I better not get points taken off already on the second day of the term." More grumbles were heard across the classroom and Ochi started laughing.<p>

"There you go guys! That's the spirit," she said, causing more collective grumbles.

Unlike yesterday morning, this morning, Orihime was kind of lethargic and officially part of the "Gloomy Morning People Club". The only one she had to blame was herself she supposed…seeing as the Rikka were part of herself after all.

* * *

><p><strong>Earlier that morning<br>4:58 AM**

"Hey! Something's been bugging me with this so called training," shouted Tsubaki not caring about waking up some other other Rikka who had fallen asleep.

"What is it Tsubaki?" inquired Orihime with a yawn.

"You brought us out again had us out all night talking to us about ways to get stronger," started Tsubaki.

Ironically, the fact that he wasn't yelling alerted Orihime that what he had to say was more important than usual, so she gave him her full attention.

"Earlier you said how getting used to having us out like this would help you in fights as you wouldn't tire easy from reiatsu use or something like that right?" Orihime nodded.

"Exactly," she said.

"Not 'exactly'! You're going about it the wrong way!" said Tsubaki raising his voice.

"Listen missy, I know you're tired, but I'm only going to explain this once so listen carefully," said Tsubaki reverting to his normal volume voice which was still louder than a normal person while crossing his arms.

"Even if you have us out for this long, and get used to it without getting tired from reiatsu usage, it may help you in a lot of different situations, but the situation it definitely won't help in a fast-paced battle." Partial realization dawned on Orihime's eyes.

"If you really want to fulfill your original intentions then what you have to do, is both keep us out like you have been doing for long periods of time, and use our powers throughout the entire time. Only then will you learn to use your reiatsu for our techniques in the most efficient way possible…woman," Tsubaki ended his explanation by flying onto the table spreading out on it and closing his eyes.

"Oh, so Tsubaki was sleepy after all?" said Orihime looking closer at Tsubaki.

"Tch, dream on woman," said Tsubaki with his eyes closed, causing Orihime to jump up a little bit. This feat was accomplished only for him to receive a foot in the face.

"Ugh, can nobody get sleep around here? Your yapping woke me up, and by the way, that 'dream on' quip was a lame one Tsubaki. I'm just shocked somebody like you can make a joke," stated Lily with a tired bored expression on her face.

"HMMHHMaahh!" shouted Tsubaki as he got Lily's foot out of his mouth.

"You crazy four eyes! I was explaining something important to the woman. Much more important than you and Patchy's loud snoring which was the reason I didn't go to sleep at all, and I don't make jokes! You already are one!" said Tusbaki making another attempt at comedy.

"Aww does Tsubaki need his beauty sleep or he'll just _wither_ away? See? That's how you tell a joke," said Lily referencing the floral influenced names of all the Rikka.

"Oooooh. Making flower references Lily. That was both high on the difficulty scale-joke index and a low blow. Not gonna' lie on that one," said Shun'ō grinning from across the room. He was sitting next to Ayame who he thought was sleeping, but she was inside her 'hood' so he couldn't tell. He hadn't gone to sleep either.

Hinagiku decided to join the fray. "Excuse me Tsubaki, but you should own up to your 'jokes' when you make them and shoulder the burden of bringing them into the world in the first place, or otherwise you just seem that much sadder. Also did you even just insinuate that whatever my apparent so called 'snoring' was, had actual less importance than your racket which had the nerve to wake me up?

"Alright you pointy eared, pointy eye patch wearing freak! You shouldn't have woken up at all. Hearing your snoring was better than hearing your voice. I'm already tired of it!" began Tsubaki. When Tsubaki got to the part about snoring, Hinagiku laughed at the thought him actually snoring, while Lily laughed at the unintentional joke when he said 'I'm already _tired_ of it'.

"In fact, it would do us all a favor if you stayed out of the conversations like I told you to before. The first thing you need to do is get a matching eye-patch for your other eye and strap it around your weird shaped head so you can use them together as a sleeping eye patch, so not only can you go back to sleep but nobody has to hear your annoying voice anymore and if anybody needs beauty sleep Four Eyes, it's Patchy over there," finished Tsubaki.

"Oh? Looks like Tsubaki went from level 0 to level 6.5 on the joke index just now. Lily, Hinagiku? Care to counter?"

Tsubaki was about to accuse Shun'ō of making up a scale. Then ask him how far up did the scale go to see if 7 was even a good score? What happened to the difficulty scale he mentioned earlier? And what had qualified him to earn the ".5" part of 6.5? But he was interrupted before he could start his rant.

"Hahahaha, I don't remember you guys arguing this much," said Orihime as she continued to laugh.

"We argued all the time at obaachan's house," said Lily shrugging her shoulders as she laid back down.

"Yeah, but never when she was around or in directly front of her for some reason," said Hinagiku.

"Either way maybe you were on to something after all with this 'having us out and getting closer to us' thing. Since if we did this around the time when you first awakened us, you wouldn't know what to do with our arguments and probably thought we were serious or something and tell us to stop fighting. It just shows how much more comfortable you are with us than when you first started. Though I can't say the same about all the Rikka with each other," joked Shun'ō. Suddenly the vibe changed in the room.

A dark aura surrounded Hinagiku. It had been building up after Tsubaki's last retort but had just become noticeable. "Forgive me Shun'ō, but how long were you under the impression that I was 'joking around' whenever I referred to that masked bandit wannabe over there as such," said Hinagiku.

After Hinagiku started talking Tsubaki was going to retort that Hinagiku was just mad that he'd made fun of his eyepatch and then call him a Don Kanonji wannabe in return because of the similar occasional pose he did to the famous celebrity, but his ears twitched and he became distracted when he heard the word "masked" and "bandit" in the same sentence.

Just then, before the vein pulse could even materialize on Tsubaki's forehead, Orihime grabbed Tsubaki and hugged him to her face laughing.

"It's alright Tsubaki, I think the bandana cloth is cool! Maybe for art today I'll draw a picture of you guys," said Orihime thinking back the picture she had drawn before in art for the "My Future Self"* project and how she had drawn herself as this amazing robot literally from the future that could shoot rockets. It was pretty creative if she said so herself.

"..and then under the caption for you will be, "The Masked Rikka" finished Orihime dramatically, trying to make a cool face, but it didn't work because her tired expression was mixed into it combined with the fact that she couldn't make a cool face correctly anyways.

"No way woman! Don't associate me with such a lame title in the same sentence ever again. Not to mention drawing me with it in your 'sick-cute' art style, especially if the caption was influenced in any way by 'The long fingernailed, elf-eared, one-eyed, one-horned flying purple freak Rikka'," said Tsubaki nodding his head at the sadly accurate caption and unintentional song reference he had assigned for Hinagiku.

This time it was Orihime's turn to actually visibly sweatdrop. "Umm…such a long title, it'll never fit on the paper."

_"That's her reason for disagreeing?"_ thought an amused Shun'ō._  
><em>

"No way Orihime, don't associate my essence with such an atrociously long title either!" complained Hinagiku.

_"Hmm? He's only mad about how long it is?" _thought Baigon to himself in the corner of the room.

"Huh? At least be original and stop copying my phrases but adding in bigger words instead to make yourself sound smart!" chided Tsubaki getting out of Orihime's grasp.

The clock struck **5:15 A****M** and the alarm went off before Orihime switched it off.

"Woah . Seventeen minutes already? Alright guys, I'm going to go take a shower. Tsubaki, Hinagiku, try to at least get along while I'm gone. Shun'ō, try not to encourage them and keep Lily out of it," she said with a tired smirk which Shun'ō reciprocated.

"When I get out, I'll get dressed, packed for school and then we'll go to find a better spot to start training. Well, a better spot than here at least. Oh and I'll get breakfast while we're out before I go to school so don't worry about me alright Ayame?" said Orihime to the quiet, but always caring spirit who was just waking up as she opened and closed the door to the bathroom. She undressed and turned on the shower, anticipating the upcoming argument between the Rikka over which was the best spot for training, yet looked forward to it.

* * *

><p><strong>8:36 AM. A knock is heard on the classroom door.<strong>

"Oh, that must be him," said Ochi-sensei snapping everybody out of their "tired in the morning" stupor as she went to slide open the door.

"'Him'? So the transfer student is a guy? Figures. There are barely any girls in this class," said a girl named Ami behind Orihime to her friend who was sitting next to her.

"Yeah it's because Class 1-1 has all the girls in it for some reason. Why do you think all the guys are always trying to go over there like a bunch of vultures before school starts and during lunch?" Ami's friend Miyaki responded.

"Anyway, what kind of person transfers this time of year?" Miyaki continued.

Ochi-sensei slid open the door and a boy with blonde hair with a strange haircut and enigmatic smile walked into the class. His hair hid his eyes from the side until he turned to face the class.

"Welcome to Class 1-3. Please introduce yourself to your classmates."

He wrote his name on the board, explaining each character of it to make sure people understood the correct pronunciation and where to stress the syllables. Though for some reason he wrote it backwards.

_"Hirako Shinji is his name huh?" _thought Orihime to herself while not really paying attention.

Ochi-sensei pointed out his backwards writing and he revealed that he did it on purpose and went on to make random jokes about the characters that made up his name.

Orihime looked at Ichigo again. He came to school by himself and didn't even come over and talk to them before class started like he did yesterday. It seemed like he had a lot on his mind.

_"Did something happen? He usually is to himself like this, but he didn't even say anything to Sado-kun this morning when he and I were talking to Ishida-kun….or maybe, maybe he feels guilty about Ishida-kun's condition so he avoided us all together. That sounds like something Kurosaki-kun would do," _thought Orihime.

Just then Ochi-sensei smoothly stopped Shinji mid-bad joke and told him to sit in the back. Shinji came and sat in the empty seat next to Ichigo.

_"Hmm? That's..where Kuchiki-san and Tetsuo-san used to sit," _thought Orihime.

Shinji greeted Ichigo and expressed how he was hoping to "treat each other well" which snapped Ichigo out of his daze, but just then his shinigami badge started screaming again eliciting a similar reaction from yesterday. Actually, the exact same reaction, as he ran out the class saying he had to go to the bathroom to Ochi-sensei's renewed dismay.

Shinji looked on in confusion.

"Please excuse him that's just how he is," said Chad from his desk.

Shinji looked at Chad and smiled, "Ah, it's ok, it's fine," he said waving his hand back and forth.

"Yeah. He's pretty much how I imagined him to be," he said with his enigmatic smirk.

Chad noticed Shinji had a barely noticable amount of reiatsu at that moment, but then he lost the feeling of it and thought it was probably nothing as he couldn't even sense it any more.

_"Even Asano has more of a feeling of reitsu than this guy," _thought Chad.

**Later that night.  
>8:00 PM<strong>

That night Chad had a gig with his band. He felt good to finally get back to doing things with them. Things had gone weird with them starting with his missing practices during the parakeet incident with the little boy Shibata. Then the time after where that one hollow had attacked him and his friends Gitano and Harutoki when they were out getting lunch. That was the very same hollow he had faced when he first awakened his powers. Though after that, he missed the gig that night and hadn't practiced or played with them again until he had gotten back from the Soul Society.  
>They found another guitarist like they were planning to anyway while switching who between played bass, but with Chad back, they then had three guitarists, with Gitano and the new member playing the first two guitars and switching between singing roles, with Chad on bass. Haurtoki was still the drummer, but they had finally found a keyboard player. They sounded so much better than Chad has remembered, and this was their first gig all together with all the new members after some summer practices Chad got to go to after coming back from the Soul Society.<p>

Chad was a bassist by affinity, but could play other roles as well. The grand scheme plan was to meet up with Gitano's friend's jazz band at the battle of the band's and join together to create a entirely new "jazz-rock fusion" sound to stand out from the tons of other hardcore rock bands who would probably all sound the same. Suddenly Chad felt Ichigo's spiritual pressure spike for a second before going back to normal.

"Hmm. Must have finally killed the hollow," said Chad.

_"He's all the way on the other side of town, yet I can still feel him. If he doesn't learn to control that he's going to create more people like Hirako or Keigo and at most like Inoue and I. Not to mention creating more work for himself by attracting more hollows. Hmm. I'll talk to him about it later, but hasn't he realized it after all this time?" _thought Chad._  
><em>  
>Suddenly he felt Ichigo's pressure spike as though he was actually fighting instead of just one-hit KO-ing weak hollows thus stopping Chad in his tracks.<p>

_"I can barely feel who or what he's fighting, but for some reason it feels familiar,"_ thought Chad walking up a few steps, but leaving his guitar on the ground. _"I can just barely feel another shinigami out there. That's strange, but that's not who Ichigo's fighting! It feels different from anything I've felt before...It feels like another shinigami, but…"_

Then Chad's senses blurred as the reiatsu he was sensing seemed to turn hollow-like; but he couldn't tell because all he could sense was shinigami reiatsu and leftover hollow reiatsu from the killed hollow mixing with the new hollow reiatsu, and just a cluster of energy till he couldn't tell was who or what was what until it was all over and the reiatsus died down as if the skirmish was finished after a few more spikes in reiatsu.

_"I'm still not that good at sensing spiritual pressure, they're too far away and there's a lot of pressures involved. Bad combination," _thought Chad.

At the very same time, Chad felt lots of other strong reiatsus come to life around the city.

_"What going on! Were those pressures there the whole time and I just couldn't feel them because I was focusing on Ichigo?"_

The short minutes felt like hours to Chad as he didn't know what to do. It would take about 20 minutes to get to where he _thought _some of the reitsus were on foot, and even then it was bad to walk into battle unprepared and his senses were blurred and jumbled combined with the reiatsus in all different sections of town until he didn't know where to start or what to do. Though once those short minutes were up, he felt large reiatsus completely die and the other reiatsus that remained diminish into nothingness after the others had what Chad presumed been defeated? He was able to make out that much. Even Ichigo's reiatsu diminished a couple minutes later as he was able to tell after all the other's vanished.

_"Man. A bunch of battles happened so fast and I don't even know what went on…and why did that reiatsu that Ichigo was with feel like I felt it before when I've never felt anything like it? It's like some kind of weird déjà vu," _observed Chad scratching his head in thought as he walked back towards his guitar, picked it up and continued towards the building where the gig was going to be a couple blocks down the street. He had been so engrossed in what was going on that he had been standing in the street like a statue with people passing by.

_"I'd call Ishida since he's best at sensing reiatsu, but I don't have his number yet. Even though he lost his reiatsu he can still sense pressure and see spirits,"_ thought Chad.  
><em><br>"I'd call Inoue, but she doesn't even have a cell phone and I don't know the number for the phone in her apartment," _Chad sighed._ "It's gonna have to wait till tomorrow I guess."_

Just then a hand clasped Chad on the back shocking him.

"Oh Sado, I didn't know you got scared so easily," laughed the new keyboardist Keitaro.

"Wow Chad. I thought we were going to be the only ones late, but now you can take the blame with us," teased a grinning Harutoki walking up behind him.

"Late?" Chad asked in his familiar calm demeanor while looking at his watch before his eyes bulged a little,"Oh man Gitano hates when we're late, let's go!" yelled Chad rushing off.

"Eh! Hey Sado wait up! Your going so fast that we're gonna show up at separate times and then only Harutoki and I will look like the late ones!" shouted Keitaro only to be elbowed in the face by Harutoki.

"Hmm? You're trying to drag people down with us? Let's just go face our destinies of getting chewed out by Gitano," quipped Harutoki, running after Chad with his drumsticks in his hand with Keitaro following with a folder with disarranged music sheets also in hand.

* * *

><p><em><strong>September 3rd<strong>_  
><em><strong>7:40 AM<strong>_

Chad got to school much earlier than usual that morning and since nobody was in the classrooms yet, he'd sensed Orihime go into the classroom where the handicrafts club met. They usually didn't have club meetings before school like the judo club did, but when he went inside he saw she was the only one there.

"Ah hey Sado-kun you're here early."

"Yeah nobody was in the classroom yet so I came here since I sensed you. I need to talk to you about something and it's better to talk in here anyway since nobody will come in."

"About last night right? What was all of that about? We can ask Kurosaki-kun about it, but there were other fights going on too besides his," said Orihime. Chad looked pleased that he didn't have to explain himself.

"Yeah I've been wondering if you sensed what happened in the same way I did. I couldn't tell them apart after all the spiritual pressures got mixed up, and I was on the other side of town. Personally I'm hoping to ask Ishida. If anyone can tell us anything it's him."

"What about the pressure that it felt like Kurosaki-kun was fighting? It seemed like a shinigami yet it was distorted somehow and after a while it became completely unrecognizable, yet gave off the vibe of a hollow," said Orihime.

"Oh, you were able to make out that much?" asked Chad.

"Yeah. Now that I think about it, let's say shinigami pressure is plain red, and hollow pressure is a plain blue or vice versa so let's say instead that the shinigami is plain blue and the hollow is plain red," said Orihime getting animated in her expressions.

Chad wondered why she felt the need to switch the colors, but continued listening.

"That means the color of this weird pressure that Kurosaki-kun was fighting was navy blue or a darker blue at first then when it changed it definitely turned to royal purple or some kind of indigo!" she said somehow making hand gestures for the colors in a secret way only Orihime could.

Despite her seemingly childish analogy, it was a perfect example.

"Wow, Inoue, I hadn't been able to make out that much, since my senses were blurred, but I felt something similar to what you are saying, but I didn't know if I could trust my senses since I was so confused on what I was sensing with all the different reitsus, but since you are saying you sensed it too...," said Chad trailing off.

"Well, I guess I had the same problem with sensing too. Don't take my word for it Sado-kun," said Orihime.

"Well did you sense those other reitsus as well? By your definition then they were some shade of 'purple' as well" said Chad.

"I don't know. There was just too much going on and it all happened so fast," said Orihime.

"Though the one thing that bugged me is that the pressure that Kurosaki-kun faced off with felt familiar," said Orihime bringing her hand to her chin.

"Huh? You too? Now I know I sensed right. We both felt the same things," said Chad pleased that his thoughts had been affirmed by a outside source.

"But, Sado-kun, it's like I said, I'm not sure what I was sensing. Neither of us was. I mean if there really was something with a 'purple' reitsu, it would have to be part shinigami, part hollow!" she said imagining a shinigami body with a disproportionally large muscular hollow arm and leg on the left side with normal shinigami arm and leg counterparts on the right. Then she added to the image an oversized tail and used said image as the reason why such a concept obviously wouldn't be possible.

"The reiatsus were just mixed up. Like you said we should ask Ishida-kun what he felt and then ask Kurosaki-kun what happened last night," said Orihime giving a final soulution.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," said Chad.

Chad helped Orihime finish organizing all materials for the handicrafts club whenever they decided to meet and then they headed to class 1-3 after realizing thirty minutes had passed.

**8:10 AM.  
>20 minutes before school starts<strong>

Chad walked into the class and talks with Harutoki about their gig the previous night followed by Orihime a little later.

"Good morning Kurosaki-kun," greeted Orihime as she neared her seat.

Shinji had come in behind her. "Morning Ichigo-kun!" he waved happily.

"Oh.. um. Morning.. Hirako-kun?" said Orihime making sure she got his name right.

"Ah you remembered my name! Morning, Orihime-chan!" he said hugging Orihime before she even realized he had moved from his previous spot causing Keigo to loudly freak out in surprise, shock and a little bit of jealousy.

"Huh? You're making too much noise. Who are you?" asked Shinji as he turned around from hugging Orihime.

"Who do you think you are calling her 'chan'? I've known her longer than you!" shouted Keigo in disbelief while Mizuiro said a quick witty side-comment nobody else heard.

From the moment he had hugged her she was shocked, but then chills ran up her spine for some reason and she realized it was because she was feeling reitsu coming from Shinji clear as day. The hand on her shoulder only furthered the feeling. It was like she could feel his reiatsu going into her, even though he seemed to be suppressing it somehow.

_"Eh? Why didn't I feel this amount of reiatsu yesterday or has his hold on his reitsu just slipped since then?"_ she thought_._ Suddenly her eyes widened.

"Also take you hands off of her! Inoue-san doesn't like that!" Keigo continued.

"Eh? You idiot. If she didn't like it she would have cried or hit me by now. No reaction means she doesn't care. Right Orihime-chan?" asked a cheerily smiling Shinji.

"What's with the attitude? Y_ou're_ the assailant here!" shouted Keigo before a hand appeared on his shoulder being no other than Chizuru who made a ironic comment about how people who do stupid stuff like forcefully hugging Orihime without realizing she is too nice to show displeasure deserved to die. The irony was not missed by Keigo who remarked on it himself as he tried to convince Chizuru that Shinji wasn't deserving of death after she proclaimed her intentions to eliminate him with her own hands.

Then Ichigo suddenly got up, interrupting Keigo and Chizuru, grabbing Shinji by his collar and dragged him out the class saying, "Let's go outside a sec Hirako," leaving Keigo and Chizuru shocked at the out of character action of Ichigo.

Orihime looked at Ichigo as he left and then exchanged glances with Chad and walked over to him, stepping over the seats of desks to do so as Chad noticed her approaching and turned to face her.

"Sado-kun, you felt reiatsu coming from Hirako-kun right?" asked Orihime.

"Hm? Yeah I felt just of trace of some yesterday, but today it seems like it's leaking out just a little more," answered Chad nonchalantly.

"Well when he touched me just now, I felt it clear as day. We weren't mistaken about the reiatsu we felt change when battling Kurosaki-kun last night. I'm pretty sure after feeling his reiatsu just now that it was definitely Hirako-kun," said Orihime resolutely.

"What? Are you sure Inoue?" exclaimed Chad as his eyes widened expressing surprise that Orihime seemed so completely sure of this theory. He also was once again relieved at his previous claims being revived and confirmed. Realization dawned on his face as he looked at the direction Ichigo had taken the new transfer student.

_"Wait. 'Transfer student'?" _he thought.

"More sure than ever Sado-kun, and it seems the whole transfer student thing is just a cover to get to Ichigo and something happened last night between them. The reason his reitsu last night felt familiar to us is because it was like a ballooned expanded version of the little reiatsu he let out in class yesterday, but we couldn't tell until just now when we felt it again," continued Orihime as Chad listened on in earnest.

"Now that I think about it, earlier you said you felt him yesterday. I must've also subconsciously felt him during class yesterday, but didn't pay that much attention to it since he let out so little of it and I'd gotten so use to the feeling of sensing traces of reiatsu from everywhere. That's the only reason I can think of for me recognizing his pressure last night but not being able to place my finger on where it was from. Though, at least now it all comes together seeing how Kurosaki-kun reacted just now," finished Orihime.

"Yeah I guess that would make sense. Although is he letting his guard down allowing so much more reitsu to slip than yesterday?" said Chad.

"Who knows the reason, but we are just going to have to do something," said Orihime.

"Yeah especially after everything that happened last night, we have the right to get answers and I don't think we should go to Ichigo. He might not have all the answers himself and seems like he is in one of his moods where he shuts everybody out. It's easier to get him to talk by going in a roundabout way than going directly to him. I say we take initiative and go straight to the source being Hirako himself. There's no need to even involve Ishida," said Chad in one of his extremely rare long periods of talking.

Orhime nodded and responded, "Hirako-kun seems like a good place to start and since he has spiritual pressure, I'm sure he's long since been able to sense our pressure since yesterday or however long he's known about Kurosaki-kun. We can at least get an idea of who he really is," said Orihime.

The warning bell rang signaling everybody school was about to start in one minute.

"Hmmm. That's strange. Where's Tatsuki-chan. She's never late to school," said Orihime before seeing her best friend's bags in her chair.

"Oh so she's here, but I haven't seen her since I came in class?" said Orihime looking around at the filling up classroom.

"She's probably went to the bathroom or went back to do something at the dojo," suggested Chad.

Shinji came back in the classroom with his usual happy grin on his face while Ichigo came in later looking worse for wear, though a huge aura came between the two of them as Ichigo sat back down next to Shinji as the bell rang signaling school to begin. Tatsuki made it in just in time and quickly took her seat. Her expression was unable to be seen.

"All right everyone take your seats! We are going to review for the test that you'll be taking at the end of the day today!" said Ochi-sensei right on cue as she slid the door closed.

"Eh? Tests right after getting back from break? What kind of school is this huh Ichigo-kun? I didn't sign up for cram-school now did I?"

"Shut it," said Ichigo without looking up at him.

"Oh you're being so cold to the lonely new transfer student. I thought I said yesterday I wanted us to treat each other well?" retorted Shinji with his unique smile.

Chad sighed. This was going to be a long day.

**3:00 PM. Classes end for the day.**

Ichigo had just come back "from the bathroom" as the bell rung.

"Ichigoooo! You're back after your fifth bathroom break so let's hang out!" offered Keigo.

"Sorry. I'm going home alone," said Ichigo getting his bag and walking right past Keigo which caused him to complain to Mizuiro about how Ichigo was still acting cold.

Uryū heard Ichigo leave. He'd noticed everything that had happened this morning and was taking it in with a grain of salt. He overheard Chad and Orihime's conversation and remembered how he had only felt the traces of reiatsu the previous night after everything was over. He had been in a fight with a weird Menos Grande who his father destroyed while revealing himself to be a Quincy. He then offered him the chance of restoring his powers if he promised to not associate with Shinigami 'now or in the future'; furthermore telling Uryuu he had until tomorrow to give his answer and then left leaving him to stand in the park where the battle had ensued.

By that time he'd finally felt the leftover reiatsu signatures around the town. It was too late though, as they had already begun to disappear and Uryū had been too distracted to care much about it at the time despite the weird vibe he got from some of what he felt.

He got his bags and left to go to "Karakura General Hospital" to tell his father his decision.

Shinji left after Ichigo and Uryū still grumbling about having to take a test.

"Ok Sado-kun. Let's go," said Orihime.

"Way ahead of you," said Chad walking towards the door with Orihime following and getting in front of him, walking down the hallway out the school the way Shinji had went.

What they heard on the way was unexpected as they quickly turned the corner to see the owner of the screaming voices.

"Where is Kurosaki Ichigo!"

"Not yet…," pathetically replied Shinji in a vague way.

"Not yet? What have you been doing? ! I told you to say whatever you needed to talk him into joining!"

"I can say anything I want, but it won't matter if he doesn't listen!"

"Then bring him by force!"

"What! Now I'm confused! That's the opposite of what you told me to do!"

"It's called a 'change of plans' stupid bald-"

"There you are," said Orihime interrupting the argument as she stepped into the fray flanked by Chad with his hands in his pockets.

"Orihime-chan?" asked Shinji.

Seeing that Shinji knew the two newcomers, the pigtailed girl gestured Shinji to come close before head-butting him at point blank range.

"You were being followed? Idiot!" shouted Hiyori.

Orihime continued while stepping a foot forward as the look on her face grew more determined. "Even if I asked Kurosaki-kun, he'd say something like 'It's nothing', so I thought I'd ask you Hirako-kun. Who are you and what do you two want with Kurosaki-kun?"

* * *

><p><strong>Omakeside story:  
><strong>  
><strong>September 2nd, 8:15 PM. <strong>Fifteen minutes after Chad sensed the reitsu all over Karakura town.

Harutoki and Keitaro had lost sight of Chad after he ran away so fast to avoid being late. Suddenly Haurtoki was kicked from behind.

"Oi! You morons are late," said a voice from behind.

"EH! GITANO! What are you doing here and wait just a minute, who're you calling late? You're later than us!" said Harutoki rubbing the spot on his back where he was kicked.

"Huh? What are you talking about. I'm the leader and manager so it doesn't count," he said walking in front of Haurtoki and Keitaro.

_"If anything that makes it count double," _thought Keitarou as he glared at the blonde haired guitarist.

"Plus now…," said Gitano taking a step forward, "I won't be the last person and you guys will be the latest!" he said running off.

Harutoki ran after in hot pursuit. It was now every man for himself to not be dubbed 'the latest'.

"What the-? Get back here Gitano!" screamed Keitaro as he ran after Gitano, but was slowed as his keyboard equipment was heavier.

Just then a hand grabbed some of the equipment strapped to his back and took it off.

"Yo. Looks like we'll be latest together then," said the familiar voice.

Keitaro turned around and saw the third guitarist and other lead vocalist Eiji.

"Yeah whatever, but I'm just mad those vultures will eat all the food before we get there. Harutoki that traitor! And to think Sado actually got there first!" fumed Keitaro.

"Eh? We'll get them back another time. Let's just go," said Eiji with his usual lazy expression and easy-going attitude.

"Yeah," said Keitaro as they took their time walking to the gig.

**Earlier on the other side of town**

Orihime had finished training for the day at the spot she found with her Rikka and had walking back home with them flying around her and talking to them despite other people passing by wondering why she was talking to herself. Orihime didn't mind as they had the right idea since she technically was talking to herself, though she had to restrain Tsubaki from attacking random people who were staring.

"What a weirdo," said a girl to her friend as she passed by Orihime. Probably from Naruki City if her school uniform was anything to go by.

"Huh? Woman why don't you say something back?" inquired Tsubaki.

"What would that accomplish? She's already gone and I don't feel like defending why I'm talking to myself," said Orihime smirking at the thought of doing such.

"Besides Tsubaki, I thought you were the type that wouldn't care about what others think of you, so why care about what some random person says to me?"

"Aww Tsubaki may be an _offensive_ type, but he's just really _defensive _and protective of you Orihime," teased Lily.

"Don't be stupid. I just wanted to know her reasoning. I want to know what it takes to get her angry and to get you out of this nonviolent nature even for a short time since that anger seems to fuel your drive to fight. I'm at my strongest with killing intent," explained Tsubaki remembering the circumstances in which Orihime awakened her power.

"I would think you would know its more complex than that. It's her drive to protect." said Shun'ō.

"Huh? Don't act like anger isn't a factor when trying to slice somebody in half," reasoned Tsubaki.

"I think the word you are looking for is resolve, not anger. As in the resolve to do what it takes to protect no matter the circumstances. Of course lots of emotions would be involved to achieve that goal during different situations. Anger is included as one of those possible emotions," said Baigon adding the two explanations together.

"Yeah. I knew even right before you guys awakened that I was going to beat that hollow no matter what, that day," said Orihime coming up to the door to her apartment and walking inside.

"Resolve or anger, use whatever it is when you use us! It gives you and all of us strength!" exclaimed Tsubaki.

"Yeah, I understand Tsubaki. Didn't I say I never wanted to feel the feeling of being a burden anymore? As long as I'm involved, I'll do whatever my part is to be helpful," said Orihime returning the Rikka to their hairpins.

Orihime looked at the clock. It was **8:00 PM.**

"Oh, I wonder what Tatsuki-chan did today. She is so busy with the karate team these days...or maybe it's me who is so busy instead," said Orihime trailing off. She hadn't even tried so spend time with her friend since getting back from Soul Society.

Suddenly she felt Ichigo's reiatsu rise.

"Oh Kurosaki-kun must have killed that hollow," she said going out to the window to catch the night breeze.

* * *

><p><strong>=================<br>Author's Note:**

**Chapter Started: Friday, August 12, 2011, 8:21:04 PM**  
><strong>Chapter Finished: Monday, August 15, 2011<strong>  
><strong>Revisions: Monday, August 15-Saturday, August 27, October 1st.<strong>

*Am I the only one that remembers Orihime's hilarious "My Future Self" drawing?

Looks like Orihime and Chad aren't going to sit back and watch things happen behind their back. They move together and have each other's back as they confront Shinji and his companion to learn whether or not they pose a threat.

Stay tuned for next chapter. Things are going to start to pick up soon. Everything here is from Chad, Orihime's and other character's point of view. Also, did anybody remember Tetsuo-san? He sat in Rukia's seat after she left for soul society for her execution and I think he appeared later as well. Also, Chad's band mates. They appear early on in the Bleach manga and anime, but never again. I decided the give them some screen time in this chapter. Grammar mistakes are most likely in this one. I am having it beta'd later. Sorry if the grammar mistakes upset you. I'm working on it. Stay tuned for next chapter. I'm really busy, but I hope to stay on schedule. If I didn't release this tonight, it probably would have come around Thursday next week, so this is for not releasing in almost two week increments. I want weekly releases. At least thats what I will try. I'm not guaranteeing anything since this barely happened itself. Life happens sometimes. lol **Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.**


	3. The Camellia Withers in Winter

Author's Note at bottom as always. I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. The chapter is more spaced out to avoid over-clustering. Beta-d by tilldeathdouspart789. Check out their stories, they have some real gems. Notice how the date in this chapter is September 3rd, and this chapter being posted on September 3rd. Along with the fact that Orihime's birthday is on September 3rd. I didn't plan it this way. Total coincidence, I promise. **Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc. **Enjoy. That is all.

* * *

><p>The Camellia Withers in Winter.<p>

**September 3rd**

**3:20 PM. The tension builds at the confrontation between Chad and Orihime against Shinji and his companion. Orihime, flanked by Chad, interrupted their conversation catching them off guard and demanding to know who they were and what they wanted with Ichigo. A response hangs in the aftermath.**

"Hah! Do you really think we'd tell you something like that?" asked the pigtailed girl.

An awkward silence loomed afterwards as nobody said anything after that. The girl saw that Chad and Orihime hadn't been affected by her words at all and her reaction to that was clearly visible on her face. Both Chad and Orihime were wearing unreadable poker faces on their faces as an effect of the awkward silence. The girl realized her mistake by reacting.

"Sarugaki Hiyori," stated the girl simply.

"Huh?" Orihime replied as both her and Chad's eyes widened. They hadn't even realized they had just won a subconscious psychological mind game.

"What's with the 'Huh?'? That's my name! My name! So now it's your turn. Tell me yours," said Hiyori annoyed that she'd ended up giving her name so easily.

"Inoue Orihime." "Sado Yasutora." said Orihime and Chad gaving their names. Hiyori's eyebrows raised as a smug smirk appeared on her face afterwards.

"Ah! A princess and a tiger? You have some classy names. I mean look at us nobody's over here. We're only a monkey and 'hira'," said Hiyori referencing Shinji's surname, Hirako.

Shinji up till now hadn't been paying much attention with a bored look on his face as he picked his nose.

"Huh? What the heck is a 'hira'? Why is my name the only one that's not a living thing? Don't include me when you're not even trying to make sense," said Shinji who was quickly reprimanded by Hiyori in a way that involved his nose bleeding as the final result.

Chad and Orihime had seen them arguing on the way to confront them, but Hiyori's violent nature still threw them off guard.

"Yeah, now that I think about it, what's with the sickeningly beautiful body and silky long hair? Along with that name, it makes you give off a really unpleasant vibe," said Hiyori to Orihime continuing with her smug expression.

"Unpleasant vibe? I wasn't aware names alone could give off unpleasant vibes to complete strangers who don't even know the person's name, and your reasons for saying she gives off such a vibe are the reasons one would give off a pleasurable vibe. You've got it completely backwards moron. You know, instead of holding a grudge after only like twenty-seven seconds, maybe you should make yourself a little more desirable," taunted Shinji.

This only resulted in a even bigger "reprimanding" from Hiyori causing Shinji to bleed even more and him seemingly learning his lesson as he stopped talking all together.

"Excuse my idiot friend's words, I hope he didn't offend you or hurt your feelings or something," said Hiyori sarcastically.

"Anyways, I don't think I'll be answering any of your questions. In fact, I think we'd be all the more safer if I just killed you," said Hiyori drawing her zanpaktou.

_"This killing intent!" _thought Chad as he and Orihime barely had time to raise their guards before Hiyori had disappeared right in front of them.

"_This is bad!" _thought Orihime who then felt a wind past pass her face and frantically turned around to follow it only to see Shinji carrying off Hiyori.

"_Wha-?" _thought Chad before his thoughts were cut off by Shinji.

"Sorry guys! Excuse us!" shouted Shinji's retreating form. He had his arms wrapped around Hiyori's waist carrying her vertically against her will, her hands flailing in the air.

"WAIT!" yelled Orihime only to be stopped by Chad's voice.

"Stop Inuoe!"

"Sado-kun! ?" Orihime turned around in surprise and confusion at why her friend would stop her. It was half accusation, half question.

"Don't you realize it's impossible to catch up to them with our speed and even if we did...," explained Chad trailing off with a downcast light shining in his eyes.

"We'd only get ourselves killed," he finished, remembering Hiyori's killing intent. If they had the nerve to chase after them now and somehow managed to catch up with them, who knows what might happen.

Shinji continued running with Hiyori despite her protest and disappeared around the corner and eventually both their pressures diminished as if he had gone a good distance and they had lowered their energy.

"All of that for nothing, and we have even more questions than when we started," said Orihime with disappointment written on her face.

"That's not necessarily a bad thing Inoue. It's just that now we know which questions to ask. We are even further than before if you think about it," said Chad trying to put a positive spin on things to console his friend.

Just as Orihime was about to respond, a brutally crushing spiritual pressure engulfed the area around them as far as they could feel as it spread out in what felt like actual explosion of pressure.

"What is this pressure!?" yelled Chad.

As the initial burst of pressure subsided, pressure continued to reverberate out to the area from a single point.

"Yeah it feels really strong! It reminds me of the mix up of pressure I felt last night!" said Orihime straining against the pressure.

"Let's go Inoue! If we want answers to anything, we better go while the answers are at least still there for the taking and unlike last night, it is right in front of our faces this time," said Chad beginning to run towards the source of the pressure with Orihime soon in tow.

The pressure continued to reverberate as they were running towards the source.

"Sado-kun! It feels like it's coming from Yumisawa Children's Park!"

"Yeah, thats what I'm worried about most! School just got out everywhere! The elementary school, and Mashiba Middle School are by the community park so they should be fine, but alot of kids from Karakura High go to Yumisawa after school!"

Orihime's eyes suddenly widened in further realization.

"Yeah, and Yumisawa District borders Naruki City. Hiragi Juniour High is around there in Naruki, and some of their kids go to Yumisawa too! There're lots of people already there or heading there right now!"

"Not to mention just normal people besides school kids," added Chad.

Suddenly the wavelength of the reverberations of pressure crested and turbulence consumed the sky.

A man in a blue shirt walking ahead as Orihime and Chad ran behind him suddenly gagged and screamed in agony, failing to even put up a struggle or resistance, before suddenly keeling over falling to the ground.

"Sado-kun!" shouted Orihime at Chad who continued running past as if nothing had happened.

"It's no use Inoue, he's dead," said Chad with a statement of finality.

_"This pressure felt strong and foreign from the start, but I didn't automatically judge it completely as a threat just because the pressure was strong, but now the answer's obvious...," _thought Chad.

A range of emotions crossed Orihime's face in that pitiful second as she processed what Chad said. She looked back at the man on the ground before Chad continued.

"You saw what happened to that guy yet you still tried to heal him as if you were denying what you sensed and felt, but if you saw that, then you can see what's happening up in the sky too can't you?"

Orihime looked up at the sky in Chad's direction seeing a mass of energy converging to a certain point.

"Something is sucking the souls of the people in this area completely out of their bodies just like that guy."

"Wha-? How- why is this happening?" strained Orihime who was unprepared for that truth as it came down on her while shocking her out of her previous state, bringing her anxiety up even higher.

"Let's hurry! Everyone in this part of Yumisawa is in trouble!" said Chad as his response to Orihime's question.

"R-Right!" said Orihime regaining her focus.

_"The range of this attack is large, but doesn't seem to be effecting the whole town or even all of Yumisawa District. So hopefully not many are in range of the attack since the schools only just got out, and that means not many should already be at the park, but still,"_ thought Chad remembering all the hundreds of souls he saw converging in the sky. _"We must save as much people as possible before anybody else is gone forever!" _concluded Chad before he turned to Orihime while running.

"Inoue..I need you to promise me something," said Chad in a tone Orihime had never heard from him before.

"What is it?" asked Orihime.

"If there are any survivors when we get there, I need you to take them all and run away as fast as you can," said Chad with the tone still evident in his voice.

"What?" questioned Orihime. She wasn't denying Chad's request straight out, but was questioning it because of a certain detail.

"If I just leave you, then you'll be all alone!" she Orihime.

"I understand you want to fight! We both want to save everyone, but there's a difference. All I have is offensive powers, but you can **literally **save people. I can't heal so it has to be you who saves the survivors. All I am able to do is fight the best I can and do my part, so you have to do yours," Chad paused before finishing. "Please Inoue."

Orihime heard Chad's reasoning and had accepted what he was saying, but that didn't make her stop worrying any less at all. Chad saw this clear as day.

"Don't worry. If I get hurt, you can just heal me right? Please I'm counting on you."

"Alright, I understand Sado-kun," said Orihime.

"._.**I** undersand, but Sado-kun, **you** don't understand, I don't want anyone to get hurt, period. Don't use my powers as a crutch for you to go off and put yourself in danger,_" thought Orihime. She wanted to say it, but what Chad said made sense about her being able to heal the wounded so she kept it to herself. Whether that turned out to be a good idea or not is still up for debate.

_"Good. So everything is set. Though the closer we get to these pressures, the more familiar they feel,"_ thought Chad as he remembered last night where the multiple reiatsus popped up around town during Ichigo's fight. Based on Orihime's color-coded reiatsu scale where Shinigami reiatsu was pure blue and hollow reiatsu is pure red, Shinji had a reiatsu that fluctuated between shades of indigo, regalia and royal purple after it changed to a more hollow dominated vibe, while being dark navy blue before the change.

Meanwhile the other hollow-like reitsus around the city last night had a more magenta, and red-violet vibe going on and didn't feel very stable compared to the reiatsu he felt now. Chad couldn't make sense of the reiatsus he felt the previous night, but now he could by looking back in retrospect and comparing it to the similar reiatsus up ahead.

These reiatsus felt transformed and in the purple ranges from the start unlike Shinji's who reiatsu had simply been vague and off-colored shinigami reiatsu before it jumped into the purples.

"_Yeah, if those ones from last night were like red-violet, then these guys up ahead are definitely a more pure shade of a combination of red and purple. Like between a darker red-violet and pure tyrian purple...oh man Inoue's scale is stuck in my head now! But it makes sense at least. It's all I have to go by right now,_" thought Chad as he scrambled up the steps into the wide field of Yumisawa Children's Park only to have the already cold, dead bodies slouching and laid out on the ground all over the park to greet his arrival.

People of all ages. Men, women, teenagers, children, babies. One young family with a infant sitting in a bench with remnants of smiles still on their faces, yet with cold dead eyes and fragments of woe scattered in between the smile and remaining expressions on their face. Most likely from the painful instant their souls were violently ripped from their body. Their eyes eerily seemed to follow Chad and Orihime as they raced to the source of the calamity that had caused their own demise as if trying to warn them like tortured souls who could never rest in peace.

Though Chad knew there were no souls in those bodies now. All that was left of their very existence were the ghostly unreadable yet readable expressions on their faces. No wondering souls with chains of fate, no going to soul society and reincarnating into another human being after their time was done. Their entity just gone. Even though reincarnation sort of erased the entity of the previous person too, at least the core soul would still be there. The souls who these bodies had belonged to weren't lucky enough to receive even that fate of simply being able to live on in some way.

Even to an apparently emotionally callous person like Chad, the scene he had just seen rattled him to the very core. Though he didn't fear what could have caused such a disaster. Fear simply naturally didn't cross his thoughts. All seeing the scene did was make him more determined to stop this from happening again! He could only guess what was going through Orihime's head after witnessing that still shot. Yet this same scene was replaying over and over across the park with all sorts of different people. Or at least the empty shells of what used to be people.

Orihime's face had blanked out and was as white as a sheet. Her eyes looking weary, her tear ducts unable to even produce an insignificant amount of liquid as they dried up while she continued running behind Chad. She subconsciously noticed his gait had changed the moment he stepped off the steps into the park yet his speed had increased dramatically. Yet her only conscious thoughts at that moment were one of a individual with one-track mind at the moment.

"How many? How many? How many did this happen to? They din't deserve this!" said Orihime in fear, confusion, and for a brief moment anger, before collapsing into despair all at once. The spiritual pressure was stronger than ever.

"Inoue! It's coming from near the center of the park!" shouted Chad rounding around a corner stepping off the paved path to get closer to the source and stepped into a clearing past all the trees with only a few bushes and nothing obstructing his view before what he saw made him run even faster.

Orihime followed suit and time instantly froze. Further up about a blur of fifteen seconds from where they could get to while running at top speed, there was a giant man with horrible pressure who began walking past all the dead bodies towards one apparent lone survivor as if inspecting the hardy anomaly who was somehow still alive. The person was on their knees and their back was facing Chad and Orihime.

_"Tatsuki," _thought Orihime in a machine like fashion. The despair completely evaporated. There was no feeling or emotion at all in Orihime at all in that moment. She was like a computer program executing an order. Time was still frozen for everything except Chad running in front of her with herself in hot pursuit and the giant preparing to kick Tatsuki into oblivion with a pure physical kick. Tatsuki couldn't even move out the way or barely register what was about to happen because of the giant's pressure. Along with the fact that the martial artist herself was one of the very objects that seemed frozen in time to Orihime.

Right as the kick was about to hit it's target Chad caught his foot with his armored arm which he at some point during the fifteen seconds had materialized, while using his other arm for support. Orihime assumed a position right behind him and held her hands out defensively in front of Tatsuki. Apparently the large man hadn't sensed them coming at all.

"Huh? Who the hell are you?" the giant asked offhandedly.

_"It was just a half-hearted kick, yet it was extremely powerful. As I thought, Inoue wouldn't stand a chance against a person of this level," _thought Chad as he held his wrist, preparing his next move.

"Inoue! Do as we planned. Take Arisawa and run!"

"A-Alright, but please be careful Sado-kun," said Orihime wrapping her arms around Tatsuki's waist, and putting on her side before beginning to run back the way she came though she could hear the large man speak as she retreated.

"Ulquiorra? Is he it?" questioned the giant man.

_"Man, on top of this guy there's another one back behind him and I can't even tell if he is stronger or not and what's with those weapons they have sheathed? Could it be…?" _thought Chad standing up from the crouched position he used to block the kick ready to make his move while analyzing his opponents.

"Oh Yammy, if you had taken the time to train your observational and investigative skills, you would be able to tell with one glance that...**he is trash too**."

"So I see? Alright then!" said Yammy getting ready to prepare another attack, but Chad had already prepared.

He yelled and he charged his arm up with energy before attacking in a burst of spiritual energy before Yammy could attack or defend, causing a massive explosion. His vision was obscured from brightness after the attack. Whether it was from his own energy explosion or something else, he couldn't tell. It was bright for a split second until it all faded to black...and then...

The explosion caused Orihime to turn around out of reflex before immediately taking in what she saw.

Chad right arm was literally crushed past the bone at the shoulder and at the elbow joint, his muscles and tendons were popped like rubber bands and string as his blood splattered and rained down providing nutirents for the nearby malnourished patch of grass. His arm was most likely split apart in those two areas with probably only a spare vein or minuscule capillary being left connected in each area yet still destroyed. His arm was essentially both crushed, mutilated and ripped off in two different areas.

"SADO-KUN!" shrieked Orihime as she somehow managed to lightly put Tatsuki down before running to Chad in one swift movement.

He fell back on the ground hard and unconscious in a pool of blood silhouetting his his arm and body. Despair had returned with a vengeance and brought along it's old friends Confusion, Fear and a new friend named Shock. Her cries towards Chad went on deaf ears.

_"No! He must have known this would happen," _thought Orihime..

"Ul-quiooo-rrraaaaaa~a" rang Yammy in a sing-song voice. "Is this girl trash too?" he asked with a grin.

_"That it would happen from the very time we felt the spiritual pressure and we began running here. Thinking over what would happen in his mind when we weren't talking and telling me to take anyone who was hurt away. This was his plan from the start, but why? He knew neither of us would stand a chance so he made a sacrifice to save anybody that was possible to save and to protect Tatsuki and I when it came down to it."_

"Yeah. She's trash." responded Ulquiorra calmly closing his eyes.

"Alright then, I gotcha'," responded Yammy as he stepped up towards Orihime deciding to use only his index finger to kill her before moving forward in a stabbing motion as a child would crush an ant with their finger.

"Santen Kesshun". The words came out of her mouth calmly and quietly, but were filled with emotion as the triangle barrier appeared stopping Yammy's finger at point-blank range. The shield cracked as she stood up.

_"Sorry Sado-kun, for breaking our promise, but neither of us have any choice in the matter now," _thought Orihime.

"Huh? What's the deal with this one?" asked Yammy to nobody in particular.

"Sōten Kisshun," said Orihime as Ayame and Shun'ō came and formed the healing barrier around Chad's right arm and his arm's injuries began to reverse themselves.

"Huh? How are you able to heal that guy! Come to think of it he's still alive. And on top of that, his arm didn't even go back to normal like it normally would do after taking alot of damage. He's pretty tough for a human," admitted Yammy before continuing. "Pretty stubborn is you ask me. There's no use gluing your broken daitō back together when your opponent will still have a real sword ready to cut it in half again with even more ease," said Yammy.

After a long pause, it was broken by none other than Ulquiorra.

"You're a strange human aren't you?" stated Ulquiorra more than asking.

The healing of Chad's arm neared three-fifths completion. Yet three-fifths complete still did nothing for Chad's level of injuries.

_"I've got to hold them off somehow. At least until Kurosaki-kun shows up...Wait no!" _thought Orihime breaking off her previous thought.

_"Why am I even thinking about relying on Kurosaki-kun already? I don't know what's troubling him, but I don't want to cause him anymore troubles. It's time I helped him out for once. If I can fend off these guys maybe that can at least give him more ease of mind and more importantly I've got to stop them from killing anyone else!" _thought Orihime.

Determination could be seen on her face. Yet other emotions were seeping in on the cracks and on the sweat that enveloped her fatigued face. Was it hesitance? No. She was determined right? Determined, yet lacking full confidence. Resolute, yet perturbed.

"TSUBAKI!" yelled Orihime as energy could be seen visibly fluctuating around her. Tsubaki arced around behind her before coming in to her outstretched hands ready for attack and glowing with energy.

"Oh?" asked Yammy in curiosity.

"KOTEN ZANSHUN!" Tsubaki then convulsed brighter with more energy from the reciting of the first part of his kotodama.

"_Tatsuki, Sado-kun, Ishida-kun, Kurosaki-kun,_" thought Orihime.

"I..." she began the last part of the kotodama.

"_Everyone! I will protect you all!_" she concluded in her thoughts. Gone was "Despair" and it's...friends for the moment.

"REJECT!" her kotodama finished as Tsubaki propelled from her hands towards Yammy in a burst of energy who in return looked on in a mix of confusion and more curiosity.

He put his hand up to block Tsubaki from hitting his head still confused as to what it was and stopped him in mid-flight, and all his energy discharged around Yammy causing grave shock to Orihime. The force of his flying at such a high relative speed and being stopped point-blank, literally single-handedly by Yammy caused Tsubaki to crush and collapse into himself, then crumpling into indistiguishable pieces, much to Yammy's amusement.

"What was that? A fly?" taunted Yammy. He still didn't know what it was, but it didn't matter anymore anyway.

After the initial shock of Tsubaki being stopped, then came the terror of taking in that he had just been completely annahilated right in front of her, and it was as if she was the one that shot him to his own death.

_The vulnerable soul that the vultures and buzzards, Despair, Confusion, Fear, and Shock had been circling had fought them off somehow before, but now a large Condor named Anguish had swooped in from it's hiding spot as it saw the soul collapse again on the ground ready for the taking. This caught the vultures and buzzards completely off guard as the all rushed in to get their share, It was every bird for themselves, all friendships aside. It wasn't often that souls completely keeled over like this one did just now.  
><em>

Aguish crossed Orihime's face. "Tsu-Tsubaki-kun. How?" Orihime stated rather than asking with the intonation of a question similar to the way Ulquiorra had earlier. However Yammy's booming voice brought her out of her reverie back to reality. A reality with no Tsubaki.

He had taken a step forward before he began talking.

"What do you want to do with her Ulquiorra? Should we take her back to Aizen-san since she has some weird techniques?"

"No. That won't be neccesary. Kill her Yammy," said Ulquiorra monotonously.

"Ok then!" said Yammy, doing a palm-thrust downwards towards Orihime only to be stopped by soomething.

Ichigo stood in the way with Zangestu pointed out stopping Yammy's hand with little effort.

"Who the hell are you?" asked Yammy for the second time that day.

"Kurosaki-kun," affirmed Orihime with a sad look on her face.

Even, Ichigo who wasn't one on picking up other's feeling and emotional state was able to pick this up. He turned to her.

"Sorry I'm late Inoue," he said simply.

Orihime looked up at him.

"No I'm sorry Kurosaki-kun." She then looked at the prone forms of Tatsuki and Chad before continuing. "If only I was a little stronger...,"

"No Inoue. There's no need to apologize and don't worry either. Everything will be alright after I beat these two! So I'll end this quickly!" said Ichigo interrupting Orihime as he put both hands on his sword.

"BANKAI!" A explosion of reitsu rose up into the sky pushing Orihime back a little with smoke and dirt. When it all cleared Ichigo was standing in his bankai outfit and Zangetsu was much skinnier and completely black.

"Tensa Zangetsu." he said emerging from the eye of the reistu storm.

"_Amazing. So this is Kurosaki-kun's bankai. I've never seen it up close before. It's so powerful, yet it feels different than the time on Soukyo Hill. His pressure feels so rough and fierce, and also thick and heavy till it's at the point that I feel smothered. I-It feels completely different than how Kurosaki-kun normally feels!_"

"Inoue," said Ichigo bringing her to attention. "Back away or leave. It's not safe."

"O-Ok," she responded deciding that if she at least wanted to be of use she should finish healing Chad. She ran over to him, but Ichigo and the other two aggressors were still in earshot as she brought up Sōten Kisshun.

_"Something feels different with using Sōten Kisshun. No I feel different all around, like I'm empty,"_ thought Orihime holding her side with one arm as she continued healing Chad before realizing it was because Tsubaki was gone and her anguish grew stronger. "_All I can do now is heal you Sado-kun..That's all I can do."_

"Eh Ulquiorra? Did he say 'bankai'? Is this the guy?" said Yammy scratching his head.

"Yeah. It's amazing how all the noise you made actually drew him out. I guess simple methods have their place after all," said Ulquorra.

"The orange hair and black bankai. Yeah he's our target Yammy." answered Ulquiorra.

"So I saved us the time of tracking him down? ¡Qué suerte!" yelled Yammy as he punched Ichigo with full force only to be indifferently blocked by Ichigo holding Tensa Zangetsu upside down with one hand.

"So you must be the one who ripped off Chad's arm?" questioned Ichigo. Yammy was shocked that Ichigo hadn't budged a bit.

"Then I'll take your right arm too," stated Ichigo cooly.

The next thing Yammy felt was a foot pressing off of his shoulder and as he looked behind him, his arm abruptly fell off.

"GUAAAHH! MY ARM!" he screamed in pain as Ichigo somersaulted in the air before landing facing towards Yammy. He dashed forward to slice Yammy's remaining arm, but had to dodge a quick punch from Yammy's other arm and instead settled for slicing his left shoulder two times along with getting in a few cuts in other spots like the side of his face and above his right knee cap before landing right back around the same place he had started.

Yammy panted in exhaustion. "You little runt!"

"Heh. I'm surprised you can still stand up," said Ichigo putting Tensa Zangetsu parallel to himself over his shoulder. "You must be as tough as you look. I guess you aren't big for no reason after all like I thought," admitted Ichigo.

"Looks like you're having quite the time there Yammy. Want to switch out?" said Ulquiorra with what seemed like a taunt yet was said in an even voice.

"SHUT UP!" Yammy yelled back at him while beginning to draw his zanpakutō.

"Hmm? Is it really necessary to use your zanpakutō on someone like him?"

"I said shut up!" Yammy yelled again as he continued drawing his weapon.

_"What? So those weapons were zanpakutōs after all?" _thought Orihime as she continued healing Chad.

Suddenly she took notice of Ichigo's reiatsu which had violently changed composition and began fluctuating wildly in power level while going between all the 'shades' of both red and blue and all of their combinations in only a second as he began to clutch at his face as if in pain.

Yammy managed to take notice of this and kicked an unguarded Ichigo at blunt close-range causing him to cough up blood.

"Kurosaki-kun!" she yelled as she saw the blow land and ran toward him.

_"No! Not again! The least I can do is put up Santen Kesshun to block him for just a moment so Kurosaki-kun can regain his footing!_" thought Orihime as she ran towards the fight.

"NO! Stay away!" yelled Ichigo before he hit the ground with a thud.

His words had barely registered in Orihime's brain as a dark shadow crept into her line of vision before intense pain like never before as everything went dark.

She hadn't known where she was, She was lying face down on something cold as she floated in a void of darkness. Waves of a strange numb type of pain coursed through her and the void surrounding her before she felt something turn her over into a bright light. Her thoughts became more coherent yet the pain fluctuated in faster waves as she stared up into the eyes of...

"Yo-Yo..ruichi..-san?" questioned Orihime still in a daze. It had taken a second to recognize the face. Orihime still hadn't gotten over Yoruichi being a human let alone a women. When it was revealed in Soul Society she thought it had been a joke. Yoruichi told her she had the best reaction of everybody and was mad she didn't save it for later to cause her an even bigger reaction. Then she remembered Ichigo and almost sat up in shock if she could move and wasn't being partially held up from her back by Yoruichi's left hand.

"Kuro...saki-ku-. Is he al-,"

"He's fine. Don't worry," said Yoruichi as she picked up something in her hand. "Are you able to swallow in your state?"

Orihime could barely register what Yoruichi said, her ears and the world around her ringing like a thousand bells. Numbness with dull pain along with a frequency of sharp stabbing pain created the foreign sensation of not even being able to feel her head even though it was indeed there.

"Y-yes," responded Orihime as she took the pill, swallowed and slipped back into the void. Vibrations could be felt occasionally in this semi-conscious dimension, but then even the void itself was consumed by darkness.

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><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

**Chapter started: Monday, August ****15, ****2011, ****6:21:04 PM est  
><strong>**Chapter finished: Saturday, August 20, 2011, 9:01 PM est  
><strong>**Revisions: Monday, August 15th- Saturday, September 3, 2011 12:00 PM est, October 1st.**

I've combined the previous sections of the author note until further notice. No omake or side-story this chapter. I suppose for chapters like this I could write a poem or something….

The title of this chapter refers to Tsubaki which is the Japanese name for a type flower of called "Camellia". The Winter War is beginning so it's like a "The camellia dies in winter because it is so cold" sort of thing.

Yumisawa district is a actual district of karakura town that i used after looking at a map from Karakura Town. I figured Yumisawa children's park is where Yammy and Ulquiorra landed since Chad and Orihime got to the park so fast after leaving school and it is the closest park to their school. Naruki City, is where the fullbringers are based in the current arc. After we finally got the name of that city, I realized it was where Keigo and Mizuiro live. It is also where I think Hiragi Juniour High(where Mizuiro and apparently Keigo as well went to before Karakura High) and Togata Juniour High(where Ooshima the punk went to) is located.

Also I noticed how Yammy calls Aizen. "Aizen-san", and not the standard Aizen-sama.

This may seem redundant to you reading over this part of Bleach's plot, but I have it in Chad and Orihime's perspectives to better give it its own feeling. I've read fanfictions that are literally a copy and paste from a manga up to a certain point where it becomes AU.

I want to be different and have some almost unnoticeable AU elements from the beginning (theres been quite a few already) yet still follow the main plot of Bleach completely. Even down to the specific dates. There will come a time in this story where it becomes completely AU, but until then I want you guys to enjoy the lead-up without getting bored.

When I wrote the orihime-chad-hiyori-shinji confrontation scene, I didn't notice how accurate it was to the anime's depiction of the scene until I watched the anime scene for reference after I had already written the scene. There really was an awkward silence, etc. lol. Also every translation for what Hiyori said Shinji's name meant was different ( lewd, flat, "hira" as in hirako, common). So I just used "hira" because it fit the context better. I also took more liberty with the dialogue this chap to add a little more meat and substance to it since it seemed like stale repetition the last 2 chaps. I might just go and revise the other 2 chaps now. I also spaced out the lines in this chapter more as it seemed clustered on my "Google Docs" and "Microsoft Word" screens.

Lastly, I reference the manga and anime a lot for finding out the smallest things such as certain actions so I can know how to describe them. The anime often puts things in better perspective or gives a totally different one from the manga so I usually end up using both sources for this story. I hope the writing in this chapter is better than the previous two. I hope to improve every chapter. It's a lot of work. O_0. I hope to get to the part where the story get's AU before publishing the first chapter, but some of my beta-ers want this thing out now. Lol

Please review. I need to get better at writing and this is my first fic. Help me, help you as they say. **Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.**


	4. Wilted Hibiscus

I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. Please help me determine if the start chapter date should be the 7th or the 8th or the 9th so I can make future revisions. More info on that in the AN at the bottom. Also, chapter is midly angsty. Next chapter is more lighthearted. Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc. That is all.

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><p>Wilted Hibiscus<p>

**September 7th***

**8:03 AM. 27 minutes before school starts.**

The girl conjured up a shrieking scream and it pierced into the world before she regained the little composure she had left and began talking.

"What happened? How did you get all of these injuries?" shouted Chizuru.

"Uh…I fell down some stairs" responded Orihime thinking up what she had thought was a foolproof excuse.

"Liar! You expect me to believe you got those injuries falling down some steps?"

_"She saw right through it?!" _thought Orihime getting nervous, but then regained her psychological footing somewhat.

"Ehehe..they were stairs, not steps Chizuru-chan."

"It's the same thing and don't 'Ehehe' me! This isn't a laughing matter! You made me worry, not coming to school for five days!*" reasoned Chizuru.

"Inoue." The word that was said bludgeoned her head from behind for some reason, but she somehow managed to make it unnoticeable before turning around to address the speaker.

"What is it Kurosaki-kun?" said Orihime with a genuine smile. She saw the frown on his face, not the usual scowl, but an expression one usually got when something was pricking at their emotional center.

"I…uh..well..Never mind, don't worry about it, it's not important," he said ducking his head and walking past Orihime and Chizuru.

Even Chizuru was confused at Ichigo's behavior as she and Orihime looked at him from behind as he went and sat at on a desk.

"Huh? What's with him?" asked Chizuru before Orihime interrupted her from speaking anymore.

"Sorry Chizuru-chan" said Orihime as Chizuru turned to look at her about to ask her what she meant before Orihime continued.

"I have to run to the bathroom!" she said running out the classroom with Chizuru stepping out the classroom calling after her, but she didn't turn back. She ran and ran and kept running without stopping until she got to the exit that took her out to the balcony hallway and opened the door going outside as she leaned on the balcony wall with her elbows and gazed longingly into the distance. It was a long period of time before her mind was able to conjure up clear thoughts.

_"Those eyes. He looked at me with that look again, but the eyes are in a different class all together," _thought Orihime as she began thinking to herself.

_"It's a look of guilt. He still feels responsible. Even though I explained to him it's my fault, that only made him bear the burden more. Once again, I can't even console him. But those eyes...The twisted vortex of emotions I can see down to his very pupils. But I can't read all of them, though the main one is guilt and maybe even a little pity? Pity because I was so weak and got hurt? No, not pity. Kurosaki-kun is not the type to pity others, he'd only put everything on himself. That's the kind of person he is. Though I can't shake being upset at the fact that he is still feeling guilty for MY failures and mine alone…,"  
><em>

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><p><strong>A couple days ago, 7:00 PM<strong>

There was the void and the darkness, but even the tiniest crack of light pierces the greatest amount of darkness. Darkness is but an absence of light after all. The light consumed the darkness overloading it.

Orihime's eyes cracked open as the brightness of the lights flooded her senses. Still vaguely conscious, she suddenly sat up hitting something very soft.

Her senses finally cleared up as she saw somebody with their hand up to their face.

"K-Kurosaki-kun!"

"Nice to see you're awake Inoue. Urahara said you wouldn't be awake till at least early morning tomorrow. Tessai must have done a great job" said Ichigo calmly clutching his head in intense pain.

"Kurosaki-kun. Why are you bleeding?"

_"How could I forget about the hardness of Inoue's head!"_thought Ichigo as he began seeing double. He had come into Orihime's room and then she began making noises so he leaned over her before being attacked by the hardest substance unknown to modern science. Orihime's head.

"It's nothing..Uh my bandages just came unloose!" said Ichigo fidgeting to wipe away the small amount of blood from his right cheek bandage and making a quick explanation . Luckily since Orihime was still in a daze from her slumber, she couldn't call his bluff. Or was that the reason why after all?

Pain suddenly surged through Orihime as she layed back down, but it played out on her face causing Ichigo to notice. He began giving her an intense look.

_"What's with that look?"_she thought.

"Inoue..I…I'm sorry," he said looking down. More emotions were absorbed into his eyes and the surrounding folds of his eyelids and under his eyes.

_"Sorry?" _thought Orihime.

A long silence passed. There wasn't much to describe it by. It wasn't awkward, just stark.

"No. Don't apologize. I was the one who ran into the fight by myself without thinking straight. I let emotions cloud my judgement and ended up getting hurt so it's my fault. It uh…,it looks painful, but isn't as bad as it looks. Don't worry about me I'm perfectly fine. I'll be better in no time, so don't look at me like that or feel like you're responsible," she finished with a weak smile in an attempt to console his inner turmoil. But suddenly a thought came to her.

"Where is Sado-kun? I just realized I never finished healing him" she said, not realizing it only made things worse.

"He's doing fine. Tessai healed him to and he's in the other room resting."

Just then Ururu came in.

"Um..I heard talking so I came in. My name is Ururu Tsumugiya. Kisuke-san said to give you this pill as soon as you woke up. It will help speed up your recovery along with restoring reitsu" said the quiet girl walking until she was on the side of Orihime kneeling down.

Orihime noticed the pill was double the size of last time and thought, "_shouldn't it be the opposite with the first pill being bigger than the second, if you think about it?"_

"I hope you are not like Jinta. He hates taking his medicine."

"Alright Inoue, I have to go home now before my dad goes crazy about me missing dinner," thought Ichigo, scowling at the thought of he and his father's pre-dinner spars. "I know you'll heal up like you told me and being here with Urahara I don't have to worry," Ichigo said with only a little bit of the turmoil erasing from his face. Though Orihime saw it was just him putting on his mask. As he left the room he seemed to move quickly since his reitsu could then be felt getting dimmer as he left the shop.

"He is a good friend isn't he?" Ururu asked catching Orihime off guard. From what she knew of the shy looking girl with pigtails, she wasn't really one to start conversation and her statement had been so "to the point". Orihime had only barely talked to the girl before after exiting the Dangai/Precipe world from Soul Society. It was when she had unraveled the large mat she launched to catch them from falling from the sky. Orihime had seen her with Urahara's group around Ichigo and killing hollows before she knew who they were and before everyone went to Soul Society as well.

"He went home to get his body then came here, stayed and waited till each of you woke up, and he didn't say anything to anybody the entire time. Just sitting and waiting. Even Jinta and I didn't mess with him like we usually do. His injuries from his spiritual body went to his physical one though so that's why he's all bandaged up."

Orihime took in the mouthful that just came out the usually quiet girl's mouth. "Yeah, that sounds like something Kurosaki-kun would do. He is a good friend, and Ururu-chan, you didn't have to introduce yourself. How could I forget you?" asked Orihime with a smile.

Ururu reciprocated the smile with a barely noticeable one of her own. Orihime could tell it was rare to see such a thing on the girl's face.

"Now you have to take the pill. Swallow it with this water," she said with the usual melancholic expression on her face returning. "It will make you go to sleep for maximum recovery speed and act as a pain killer. Your friend already took his earlier."

_"Earlier? Ah, Sado-kun, I almost forgot about him,"_she thought with her eyes widening in realization before narrowing back. _"Well at least he's alright, since Kurosaki-kun said Tessai-san healed him, but I never finished healing him and I can sense from his reiatsu that he's still injured, but recovering."_ She closed her eyes as if reminiscing, _"I was so upset that I couldn't even heal him correctly," _she continued with a sigh.

Suddenly she found a hand being shoved into her mouth making her eyes open in shock.

"I see, so you are like Jinta after all and hate taking medicine. It's for your own good," said Ururu in a completely calm manner. Before Orihime could blink or choke, water was being poured down her throat as if it were a drain, forcing her to swallow all of it or choke.

Orihime made sounds as the pill and water were put in her mouth so quickly. Then swallowed in exasperation before laying back down.

"See? Was that so bad?" asked Ururu, but Orihime didn't have the energy to answer back as she saw fists slam into Ururu's head and began spinning.

"You idiot, are you trying to kill Tessai and the boss's patients! And just who did you say hates taking medicine!"

"Ahhh~!," Ururu yelped in surprise. "N-no Jinta-kun, I wasn't trying to kill her, that's why I gave her the medicine so she _wouldn't_ die, and you _do_ hate taking medicine. That's why you always cry whenever Tessai-san gives you any kind, from shots to-!".

"Shut up!" shouted Jinta frightened at the use of the words "shots" and "Tessai" in the same sentence and began digging harder into Ururu's head.

A glint appeared from behind which was then revealed to be Tessai's glasses and he came in and picked Jinta up out of nowhere.

"Shots? Thank you for reminding me. It _is_ that time of year isn't it? Go get the 1 inch diameter intravenous 'booster shot', Ururu," said Tessai.

"Yes," she said running off not before Jinta shouted after her retreating form.

"Wait! One inch? You sadistic freaks! Tessai, you bastard! You and Ururu were in on this together from the begggin-!" he was cut off by Tessai's large hand covering mouth as his glint in Tessau's glasses returned.

"Now, now Jinta-dono, this will be over quickly if you just cooperate this time," he said which was answered by more of Jinta's muffled screaming. "Don't make so much noise in a patient's room Jinta-donoo~," said Tessai carrying Jinta outside the room to see Ururu who had returned with a red box and closed the door.

After they left, Orihime closed her eyes. The pill had made her sleepy so quickly she hadn't been able to fully take in the scene that just happened. She wasn't able to tell how fast she went to sleep since when one is falling asleep, their sense of time is distorted. Even so, she could tell it was a fast process.

**The next day(flashback continued)  
>7:32 AM<strong>

Orihime had woken up a couple minutes ago.

"Wow, I feel much better!" said Orihime sitting up and talking to Urahara and Tessai.

"Yes, that was specially made medicine although experimental, it was made to be 'collaborative' type of medicine will with kidō healing. A concept similar to 'real world' medicines such as ones for an injured eye. They have both eye drops, and normal antibiotics for such a 'double effect'," explained Urahara before pausing.

"Hmm, that wasn't really a good example, but more importantly, it's good that you feel better. Last night you woke up ahead of time. Right now, is the the time I thought you would wake up normally, but instead you got another dose of medicine last night, speeding up your healing process," Urahara continued explaining as Tessai began taking some of the bandages off of Orihime's face. He removed the scabs with weak, non-intrusive kidō and closed up the wounds for good as he began speaking.

"That way I healed you and Sado-dono was with a 'Bakudo' or binding kidō that I developed especially for healing and recovering reiatsu. It binds to the soul chain of the patient I use it on, and regulates the reiatsu fluctuation during recovery time, so no reiatsu is lost as 'waste'. Along with acting as a stimulus itself, using the patient's reiryoku in a fused effort to heal their body and their reiatsu inflicted wounds. It does this in the most efficient way possible since it adapts to the body's natural reiatsu output. It is a quintessential technique for extremely fast yet maximum recovery without too much disruption of the body's homeostasis thus recovering that much quicker post-treatment. The purpose of the medicine you took was to further augment this process through an external source, thus the 'double effect' I mentioned earlier. All of this also served to heal your physical body and spiritual body within. When somebody like Kurosaki-dono gets injured in their spiritual form, when they go back to their physical body, their injuries are translated to that body. Your situation is inverse. You sustained reiatsu powered attacks to your physical body, thus injuring your soul within as well. My kidō technique works well for this type for situation," explained Tessai further as he finished taking off Orihime's bandages.

He then went to tie a bandage around her forehead, and two other bandages below the forehead wrap and an smaller one on her lower left cheek diagonal to her mouth.

"Yeah, it felt like the left side of my face was smashed in and completely torn apart. My eye-socket and eye were crushed, but there's not even a even scratch anymore after just one night of sleep! It doesn't even feel like it just finished healing or anything. It must have healed soon after I went to sleep! It's like it never even happened!" said Orihime with shining stars in her eyes in amazement. "This must be the best technique for healing ever and you don't even have to be near me to keep the spell going!" said Orihime still fawning over her lack of injuries.

_"Hmm. interesting. You really are naturally modest Inoue-san, unless you are too distracted at the moment in amazement over your lack of injuries to not realize that your own abilities far exceed our level of techniques. Then again this is the first time you have really been on the opposite end of being healed from a serious injury. Even so, to say it is the best healing technique? It must be because of her lack of familiarity with kidō and also her fascination with the complexities of Tessai's technique. Compared to that technique, yours is dramatically simpler, yet much more effective across the board. Even I can't fully figure it out,"_admitted Urahara analyzing Orihime's reactions.

Tessai however was moved to tears.

"Once again you bless me with such a wondrous reaction!" said Tessai dramatically bowing.

"Most Bakudo kidō or even Hado kidō don't require continuous maintenance by the way which is why I used it opposed to marginally using healing kidō," said Tessai dramatically bowing.

"Oh! That makes sense! 'Once again'? Oh you mean like how I reacted to the underground room? Yeah that place is amazing! I've been meaning to ask you how long it took to do it!"

"Nice explanation Tessai. Well you would be better at explaining your own technique than me," said Urahara twirling his cane with his eyes hidden by the shadows of his hat.

"Oh, don't be so modest Tenchou," replied Tessai still in his episode of tears before turning back to Orihime to answer her question, but she had gotten up when he wasn't looking and went to the door frame by Urahara.

She walked into Chad's room across the hall.

"So, this is where Sado-kun was staying. I thought I felt traces of his reiatsu, but I didn't feel his main reiryoku presence anymore, though now I know why," said Orihime seeing the slightly messy and pushed down covers from the traditional futon.

Urahara walked in behind her.

"It seems he left during the night. He wasn't fully recovered, but to a sturdy guy like him, it's nothing. His arm had almost finished healing anyway, and he had a different treatment than you anyways. Only traditional healing kidō.

"What? Why do you say almost finished healing as if it were a scratch? His arm was ripped off and split in two different places, and I didn't even get to finish!"

"_As I thought," _said Urahara in his head.

"It seems you underestimate your own abilities. His arm was completely fine and actually only _did _have a few scratches. Well a few scratches to him anyways, and that was the last time I checked. Who knows how much the medicine healed him, though then again who knows what time he woke up and probably interrupted the recovery process. Either way if you feel for his reiryoku pressence, it's there.

Orihime closed her eyes and felt for his reiryoku and realized she had been feeling it all along and not realizing it. It was there, though not as "explosive and confident, yet refined" as she remembered it feeling.

"I guess you are right. He must have went home. He's the type to not want to be in debt to others even if they are only looking out for him," said Orihime with a solemn gaze in no particular direction before snapping out of it.

Urahara's goofy visage returned. "Yeah. Him and Kurosaki-san are very alike, though a stranger wouldn't be able to tell at first impressions. Even those two themselves might not realize it."

"Hmm. They aren't the type to realize those kinds of things in the first place," responded Orihime thinking about Ichigo and Chad.

"Inoue-dono! Your injured arm needs to be supported properly!" said Tessai wrapping and tying a makeshift sling around Orihime's arm that was still in a cast.

"Ah, thank you Tessai-san, I wasn't thinki-" said Orihime before a defeaning rumble shook the room and the entire shop including the underground room.

"...Um...ehehe looks like I'm hungry," she said embarrassed as a hearty blush materialized on her cheek. She hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday.

"Why do I have a feeling your appetite can potentially rival Yoruichi's?" asked Urahara with a nervous tone under his breath.

"Hey Tessai-san, I was wondering maybe I can help make breakfast or something since neither Urahara-san or Yoruichi-san seem like the cooking type..and I uh I just want to say thanks for everything. It's all I can do right now," said Orihime.

"Ah! Wonderful idea Inoue-dono! And you're right, never allow the Tenchou or Yoruichi-dono in the kitchen," said Tessai as he guided Orihime towards the kitchen.

**9:06 AM**

After a surprisingly normal breakfast with a few occasional culinary twists, Orihime went home to her apartment. It was heart-warming how everyone at the shop lived together like a family. Urahara, Tessai, Yoruichi, Jinta, and Ururu, while Orihime had been the guest. It was pretty hectic to say the least, but she had a good time and was even invited back by Tessai for more of her 'culinary suggestions' to the chagrin of Jinta for some reason. She had been humbled at the request since Tessai was a master chef himself and she had a lot to learn from somebody like him. More importantly, she had asked Urahara who the beings who attacked the town were. Finding out that they were arrancars and what exactly they were, and that they were under Aizen shocked her even though it shouldn't have. She told Urahara about her color code and he reacted in surprise that she had realized even that much already.

The events of yesterday replayed through her head after obtaining such information.

_"Some birthday that was," _sighed Orihime vaguely with a downcast expression.

She went to open her door and walked inside her apartment, and took a shower. She came out and put on some clothes to wear around the apartment before sitting at her bed.

_"Alright, better now than letting this wait any later," _she thought with a sigh.

"Ayame. Baigon, Hinagiku, Lily. Shun'ō. Tsubaki," she quickly called them out by name before realizing her mistake.

The Shun Shun Rikka all appeared in front of Orihime. It had been tugging at her sanity since she woke up yesterday, and earlier that morning at Urahara's she had to iron her face to keep her emotions from seeping through. The Shun Shun Rikka had all appeared from their dormant hairpin state right as Orihime called them each by name, so everybody including her heard her call Tsubaki last only to be answered by stark silence.

The silence continued before Orihime spoke, her voice breaking.

"E-everyone. I-I'm sorry," she said with formerly held back tears welling up and then flowing down her face.

The Rikka all had solemn expressions on their faces. Ayame's face couldn't be seen, but you could hear her sobbing from under her hood. Shun'ō had his hand over her shoulder trying to console her. He was at a loss for words himself. He didn't know what to say. He was a leader and yet he couldn't even do anything. Now everyone including Orihime were upset.

Suddenly Orihime stood up. She already realized before that it was extremely easy to tell the rikka her most inner most feelings, which she believed had something to do with the fact that they were part of her themselves.

"I'm sorry that I was so weak and let Tsubaki die," she said rather bluntly, her voice unbreaking, her face serious as she continued talking.

"Though 'sorry' definitely isn't enough. I've thought about everything that happened and it is completely my fault for what happened. You guys have told me more than once how my emotions control my abilities and this time, I knew this for myself, yet I allowed them to effect me negatively and Tsubaki paid the price for _my_ mistake," she finished, no more expression on her face, yet heavy with an unemotional weight of grief.

Shun'ō was astounded at what Orihime had just said.

"What? Orihime, you can't blame this all on yourself, it was the arrancar who are at fau-".

"Shun'ō," came the interruption by Orihime. It wasn't emotionless, it was just a quiet sad sound.

"You're not helping me by trying to blame the arrancar. If Tsubaki was here, he'd scold me instead of consoling me. Telling people 'it's going to be all right', when it's not just makes them comfortable in their weakness. Face it Shun'ō. Sado-kun and I were no match. To them, we were just like that other arrancar described. Trash. Like I said before, I've thought about it. So if you say something like 'You weren't too weak, the arrancar was too strong', you are wrong. Actually it's more like both of those things and with that said, I'm still at fault for being too weak, even if the arrancar was stronger. I should have at least been able to contend with them like Urahara-san, Yoruichi-san, and Kurosaki-kun. Though it's like the saying 'coulda, shoulda, woulda' right?" said Orihime referencing her second-guessing of her actions in retrospect.

The other Rikka were looking at her with saucer eyes which were taking in everything Orihime said.

"You could even say, 'It wasn't just you who was weak, as Kurosaki-kun also got hurt, and Yoruichi was almost hit by the cero and even got injured herself'," she said remembering the bandages she saw on Yoruichi's arm earlier that morning.  
>"Though that would be the wrong thing to say. It would be making an excuse, It would also be dragging people down with you to make you feel better." Orihime had a contemplative look on her face as if she was really thinking about what she was saying.<p>

"If you take those two things aside and take in what they mean, let's add in the fact that it was my fault that both of those specific things happened," continued Orihime.

_"Plus, Sado-kun also got hurt defending me. I'm the one with defensive powers. I should be defending him. No, that's bad logic. I understand why he did what he did though, I had to get Tatsuki-chan out of there. We even agreed that I would do that before hand. I did what I had to do. Speaking of which..her reiatsu seems normal and she doesn't feel hurt. Why am I just thinking about her now?"_thought Orihime in surprise before calming back down in an instant.

"I sound like I'm giving myself pity, but I'm just saying what happened, but just complaining and getting depressed won't get us anywhere," moaned Orihime burying her head in her hands and curling up in a ball.

The Rikka flew in and landed around her looking at her with worried expressions.

"You guys. I'll do anything to get Tsubaki back. Anything..." she trailed off with a vacant, dead look in her eyes. A silence flooded the room. Suddenly her eyes widened, the light shining straight through them out into the world.

"I have an idea on how to get him back!" she yelled shattering the silence.

Lily was roused out of her melancholy at this statement. She couldn't claim to know something like 'who missed Tsubaki the most', but she was pretty sure she was just as upset as Ayame who had been sobbing off and on. She could see the same sentiment in Hinagiku's eyes...well eye anyway.

"What! How Orihime!" shouted Lily.

The other Rikka asked similar sentiments at the same moment. Right then they were lost and Orihime rose as a leader to guide them as she had promised she would do.

Though as soon as these exclamations were announced by the Rikka, Orihime bolted past them.

"FOLLOW ME!" she shouted and she ran at her fastest pace. Even faster than the pace she had ran with Chad the previous day.

She ran in blind abandon to the spot of yesterday's battle. Somehow the shinigami had done some massive damage clean-up. All the dead bodies were gone without a trace, and she could feel some kind of barrier around the hole where the arrancar appeared to have created when they crashed. It didn't feel strong or stable. Probably just put up by lower level shinigami to stop humans from going there for the moment until they could send somebody to fill it up.

She had gone there to find any piece of Tsubaki, any piece so she could try to heal him. It was all she had left. She kept in denial about how she couldn't feel Tsubaki so why bother to find him if she would just find his dead body in pieces to make her feel worse. She kept all the negative thoughts out of her head. It was their fault Tsubaki had died in the first place. She looked and looked with the rest of the Rikka blade of grass by blade of grass for hours and found nothing. Only later did she realize his body must have disintegrated into reishi like a hollow does when it dies. This did not comfort her in the least.

She then tried calling out Shun'ō and Ayame to heal the hairpin on the right side of her head from where Tsubaki himself came from and nothing happened. She kept the negative feelings from coming inside her mind, while her tears functioned for channeling the rest of them out of it. Though soon she realized that they were inside her all along causing her to shed even more tears.

* * *

><p><strong>Back to present day(Sep 7th*)<br>8:10 A.M. Twenty minutes before school starts**

The memories came flooding back to her with a vacuum of hopelessness..

_"Why? I know the memories are sad, but why was I just completely overcome with emotion. It shouldn't have caught me off guard but yet...NO! No more tears, no more crying. No more negativity!"_thought Orihime holding her hands to her head in frustration.

"Shun'ō!, Ayame! she called out the Rikka, her hands still covering her face. They came out of her pocket where she put her hairpins since the bandages wouldn't allow her hair to be parted as usual.

"I can sense Sado-kun's reiryoku. He hasn't come to school or gone anywhere for days. I got his phone number before we started training together with Yoruichi so I tried calling, but didn't get a answer. I want to go check on him after school, but for now, please go and finish healing his arm from before."

"Oh, so you finally want to test out how far we can go from you, along the shared consciousness thing some more? It worked a little bit last time right? So that means we can only improve," said Shun'ō trying to momentarily distract Orihime from her pain and make conversation.

"Yeah, I've wanted to check on Sado-kun for a while. Please be sure to stay away from any hollows and once you get there, may you and Ayame heal him please?"

Shun'ō nodded. "It may be pointless to tell you something like 'Don't worry', but be assured that hollows won't find beings like us appetizing. Alright then. Let's go Ayame."

"Ok," responded Ayame quietly.

They flew off into the sky together rather quickly until Orihime couldn't see them anymore.

_"Even before I realized it, I could always feel the individual presences and reitsu of the Rikka whenever I had any of them out which is why I had the idea to test the limits and potential of it in the first place while in Yokosuka,...but maybe I made the wrong hypothesis for how far it can evolve. Not to mention I don't know if they can do the kotodama by themselves. No. There is that negativity again. It worked in Yokosuka with the homework, I just have to train and get better which is what I'm doing now by sending them to Sado-kun. I can only think they are still going to his house. They haven't been forcefully returned to my hairpins for going too far or something like that yet,"_ thought Orihime.

"_As for the kotodama, when they first awakened they said the kotodama for Sōten Kisshun for Tatsuki-chan, though they did it together with me at the same time, so I wonder if they can do it without me.. How would that work? It's like a zanpakutō working without it's owner, but then again I'm no shinigami. Maybe it just has to be in my will for the Rikka to do a technique when I'm not with them and they will be able to do it since they can say kotodama. Ugh, this is so confus-"_.

"INOUE!"

Once again a voice snapped her back to reality out of her little world inside her head.

She turned around towards the origin of the voice before her brain could even register who that voice sounded like since her eyes answered the question quicker.

"Ku-Kuchicki-san!" she asked in surprise.

"Hey! Long time no see!" Rukia said running down the hall.

_"Is that Kurosaki-kun she's dragging?" _she thought, but paid it no mind since a situation like this tended to explain itself rather quickly.

"When did you get back? How long are you staying?" she asked instead, but she had actually wanted to know the answers anyways.

"Huh? Don't worry I'll tell you all about that later."

"Hey," she said turning back to Ichigo who she had a hold of from the back of his collar as she pulled him up from being hunched over.

He gained his own footing back and was panting profusely.

"Kurosaki-kun...um...are you alright?" asked Orihime as he looked up at her.

He then began talking, "Inoue...I-" he said before stopping.

The same tired scene was being re-rehearsed until Rukia threw a little improvisation in as a breakout character.

"HE'S SORRY THAT HE'S SO WEAK!" said Rukia right after Ichigo had stopped talking, acting as a save before Ichigo messed things up again pushing his head down to get him out of the scene.

"AGUH!" yelled Ichigo from being pushed down.

Orihime hadn't been prepared for such a switch-up in the usual script of 'Angst of Ichigo' and looked on to see what would happen next in surprise.

Ichigo raised his head back up, a new look on his face. It was new, yet somehow familiar. It was his old face brimming with confidence and determination.

"I-I'll get stronger. So then...," he finished raising his head. "...Next time I'll definitely protect you."

Realization and relief crossed Orihime's eyes.

_"Finally. To see that face again. He had been down since the 2nd of the month for some reason, and got even more depressed daily after the fight with the arrancars, but now, I'm so glad. Kurosaki-kun is back to normal. For some reason when he's happy he just gives off a vibe that makes me confident in myself as well. Maybe part of it is the feeling of not being the source of guilt anymore. What a horrible feeling that is and for it to suddenly go away..."_

"Thank you Kurosaki-kun," she turned around to go to class before turning her head back around.

"And thank you too, Kuchiki-san," she said smiling at Rukia who returned the smile. "And welcome back!" finished Orihime as she began walking to class with Ichigo and Rukia following slowly behind her. The two ensuing in some nostalgic banter similar to her Shun Shun Rikka causing her to smile at the memories of Tsubaki instead of crying for the first time.

_"Yeah. Thank you for everything Kuchiki-san"._

**6:03 PM Orihime is at her apartment. The sun began setting 3 minutes ago.**

Orihime knelt down in front of her makeshift memorial of her older brother Sora to talk to him like she used to do every day. Even though she knew now that Sora's soul was in Soul Society, she still talked to him.

She was concluding the story about Ichigo. She had been telling him her situation day by day along with some tidbits about Ichigo and Chad.

"So see? Kurosaki-kun's back to normal and...and..," she continued looking down.

She recalled earlier that morning how Rukia had came in and whipped Ichigo back into shape. The way she had made him apologize to Orihime and knew how to get him to do it correctly unlike earlier. The way she looked at his eyes as if she drew out the darkness. Then with that same gaze, filled it with light to light up his eyes again reawakening his resolve, all in a short time. All Orihime had managed to do was catalyze Ichigo's depression, and had no hope of even doing anything until Rukia came along and fixed it like child's play. All this time she was the one who could understood Ichigo the best, but now she realized even though she could understand him, Rukia could do that better along with actually doing something with that understanding without breaking a sweat.

"Maybe I'm just a little...jealous," Orihime admitted to the picture frame and the sunset to her left.

Suddenly she felt a sensation causing thoughts to go ff in rapid fire.

_"Huh? This is Sado-kun's reiatsu. I can feel it as if he's right next to me. Did Ayame and Shun'ō finally find him? What took them so long? Did they go on an adventure or something? I guess I'll find out later. Let me focus on them to see if I can feel anything further," _thought Orihime smiling at the thought of Shun'ō showing Ayame around the town.

Orihime had been worried throughout the day about Shun'ō and Ayame. She could still feel their presences, but she didn't know exactly where or what they were doing. Similar to how she could fell Tatsuki's presence.

_"Now it feels like it does when I use Sōten Kisshun. They are definitely healing Sado-kun. I can feel it as if he is right here in front of me and I'm healing him," _said Orihime continuing to focus.

_"I guess I should go over there like I said I would and check on him," _thought Orihime as she got up from kneeling down and went to clean her room a little before heading to Chad's house before she heard a knock on the door.

"Huh? Who could that be?" she thought aloud before walking over to the door to open it.

Opening it she saw none other than Rangiku Matsumoto the vice-captain of the 10th division. The women smiled upon seeing Orihime.

"Heeey Orihime! I was in town and was just wondering if I could stay with you!" she said quickly and to-the-point.

"Uh..huh? You... want to stay here? That's fine I guess, bu-".

Suddenly she was in a vice grip hug by the shinigami who didn't seem to notice her injuries, causing her to move her left arm to avoid being caught in the death hug. Despite this she yelped out in pain and surprise.

"A nice quick answer to a quick question! I knew you wouldn't turn us away Orihime! Thanks so much," said Rangiku continuing her vice-grip before releasing her.

"Ah, now that that's settled, let me use your bath. I'm covered in sweat! Even on my chest!" said Rangiku with great enthusiasm.

"Um, the bathroom is over here," said Orihime moving aside to let Rangiku in while pointing straight towards the bathroom.

"Good. Let's take a bath together Orihime!" said Rangiku gesturing Orihime back into the apartment and closing the door.

"W-Wha? No, I already took a bath Rangiku-ah wait don't grab my arm like that, it hurts!" Orihime continued, before Rangiku suddenly stopped.

"Ah, wait a sec!" she said opening the door back up and calling out to the sky. Orihime's hair was sticking up all over the place from Rangiku's embrace.

"Hey! You can come in since you don't have anywhere else to go," she yelled.

"Shut up," replied Hitsugaya who had been on the roof the entire time.

"Eh, let's go Orihime, he'll come in eventually. He's just trying to act cool."

_"Hmm? I didn't know Tōshirō-kun was up there. Well she did say 'us' earlier. I was surprised when I felt the rest of the shinigami's reiatsus after Kuchiki-san as well," _thought Orihime.

"Uh, ok I'll run your bath now, you can put your stuff somewhere if you have any," said Orihime going to the bath as she ran the water.

The bath finished running and Orihime called Rangiku who eagerly came running at the call. She went inside and closed the door. Orihime sat outside the door to the side after awhile.

"Is the water warm enough?" asked Orihime.

"It's great! It's a little crowded though," said Rangiku joking around.

"Sorry," Orihime responded smiling.

"Ah, no I'm sorry that came out wrong" replied Rangiku.

A small pause happened just to be broken right before it could be long enough considered a 'silence'.

"So, what's the matter? Why so serious all of a sudden? You haven't been yourself," Rangiku said nonchalantly, yet piercing Orihime's thoughts at the moment.

She had only managed to talk to the vice-captain during the week they stayed in soul society after Aizen's betrayal. All the shinigami had been interested in the 'ryoka' after they had been considered 'friendlies' and for the fact they had battled the forces of Soul Society themselves, yet Rangiku could already read her like a book. Was she that perceptive or was Orihime just a simple 'read'?

"W-whaaat? That's not true," said Orihime who for the first time had allowed Rangiku's bluntness to get to her.

"Come on, tell me all about it, I'm a good listener," replied Rangiku instantly crushing her lie.

"Um…It-It's nothing, don't worry about it. I can manage," said Orihime dismissively, trying to avoid the inevitable.

"No. Really, please tell me at this point or I'm going to have to hurt youu~u," said Rangiku in a relaxed voice causing Orihime to laugh before looking down still smiling. It was a sad smile.

"Kuchiki-san, she really is something isn't she?" said Orihime beginning to curl her toes and feet on top of each other.

"Even though Kurosaki-kun was really down for a long time, she was able to erase it all in no time at all."

"I hate this feeling. This feeling of uselessness is like the feeling of being dead weight, a burden. Nothing has changed at all it's only gotten worse," said Orihime thinking of Tsubaki and the fight with the arrancar.

"Kurosaki-kun can do amazing things when he is confident and determined as if he can fly through the sky without a care, but when he is depressed or distracted it really weighs him down, keeping him in place unable to move on. He becomes completely unable to progress. Instead of helping him release his burdens to soar again, I became the very ball and chain weight weighing him down. The complete opposite of what he really needed and I didn't even see it."

"Then when Kuchiki-san came, she made him feel better just like that. I was happy at first, ecstatic even. Kurosaki-kun no longer was using me for his guilt. I was no longer weighing him down, but…,making him feel better; it was something _I couldn't _do.

"That's why I envy her," said Orihime her voice breaking. Tears began streaming down her cheeks.

"But, why though? It's not like I hate Kuchiki-san and she has quickly become one of my better friends. I like her a lot and I should just be happy Kurosaki-kun is alright, but I'm not. She's so strong yet gentle, kind and...beautiful. She lifted Kurosaki-kun's spirit and even has a special chemistry with him nobody else has," said Orihime between small sobs. The completely foreign emotion of 'coveting' was taking its toll on her as it fully enveloped her very being.

"If only I could do something like that. I shouldn't feel this way! I never do when I'm at school, but when I'm alone at home all by myself, I can't help it," said Orihime curling her body into a fetal position-like position.

She was full of confusion and turmoil, the foreign emotions of jealousy and envy, and the contradictory emotions swirling in her mind. Along with her inner turmoil with a lack of Tsubaki and current extremely low self esteem from multiple sources all combining together at once and hitting her prone exposed form and all she could do was take it, take it all.

Suddenly the door to the bathroom opening revealing Rangiku, making Orihime look up in a daze. Rangiku had come straight out of the tub and was giving Orihime a unreadable look.

She stepped forward and suddenly hugged Orihime, making her yelp in pain like before, but suddenly Rangiku loosened her grip.

"You silly girl…" said Rangiku in complete seriousness.

She then began tickling the completely off-guard Orihime who began a laughing fit among some complaints for Rangiku to stop before she fell on her back on the floor pinned by Rangiku who again suddenly stopped her assault and looked down at Orihime.

"So silly," started Rangiku.

"It's important to just be yourself. That goes for both you and Kuchiki. Ichigo is still a kid who can't yet fully stand up on his own, so he needs all the support he can get. Rukia has her own thing that helps him out, so do you. You stand by him no matter what. If he got his drive back like you say, that means he is determined to get stronger to protect you right? You _are_ part of his drive that's keeping him 'flying in the sky' as you said before. Despite this, the fact remains that he needs both you and Kuchiki. Aren't you all nakama? No matter what, you all stick together. You can continue finding more ways to help him soar in the future. If he fails to protect you or anyone else, don't let Ichigo's emotions make you consider yourself a burden. The kid places everything on himself no matter what the situation. I thought you would understand that. Just get stronger." Rangiku continued her speech as Orihime put her arm down on the floor taking in everything she said.

"Also what's the matter with being jealous? You're trying your best to come to terms with some very serious emotions. Even some things you aren't telling me right? It's easy to run away from it all, but you are facing it head on. You're so great for that," continued Rangiku.

The ocean of emotions that had been swirling inside Orihime burst out all at once after hearing Rangiku's speech as she began sobbing.

"There, there, there cry you poor thing. Drown your sorrows into my chest," said Rangiku with her arms around Orihime.

**6:23 PM.  
>Over Karakura's skyline.<strong>

Five arrancars saunter down toward a _sixth_ one who had been sitting on the roof for quite some time. He looks up at them acknowledging them.

"Finally. What took you morons so long to get here?" asked the sixth one. He had blue hair and a mask fragment along his jaw on the side of his face.

"Anyway, I assume no one was detected right?" he asked standing up.

"Of course not, said the arrancar standing in the middle. He had a long face with black hair which was braided and hung over his shoulder. His mask fragment was on top of his head while a portion dropped down over the upper-left side of his face. His mask ended in a long spike that stuck out to the right similar to Mayuri's hat.

"Anyway Grimmjow," he said addressing the blue haired arrancar.

"What? Keep talking," answered Grimmjow.

"On the way here we all picked up...some spiritual pressures. There were many of them, and strong. That _doesn't_ match up with Ulquiorra's report," he finished.

"Tch. Open your pesquisas!" commanded Grimmjow in annoyance. They all closed their eyes as if surveying the area with their mind. A short moment passed as they sensed and felt all the pressures around the town as if feeling them bobbing up in down in an ocean. The ocean being their field of sense.

"Just as I thought, there are many more. This is Soul Society's doing I guess. They must be reinforcements. It's gotten so complex thanks to you. If you had done your job right, this wouldn't have happened. This is why you're soft Ulquiorra," said Grimmjow. He growled at his mentioning of stoic arrancar's name.

"Di-Roy, Shawlong, Edorad, Yylfordt, Nakeem," said the blue haired arrancar addressing his fraccion.

"There's no need to hold back at all no matter how weak they are, if they have even a bit of reiatsu then we kill them all!" he finished.

"Now sync up with the reiatsu you are going to go after. I want no mix-ups. Especially anyone getting in my way," he said closing his eyes and using his pesquisa again.

"Now which one is the Shinigami, Yammy fought?" thought Grimmjow aloud.

"Hmm. Looks like Grimmjow called dibs on the orange haired kid. I didn't want to particularly fight him anyway, but I would have liked to anyway. Oh well," said Edorad.

"Really now? You should have known from the start that Ichigo Kurosaki would be Grimmjow's target. Why even show surprise? Let alone say it out loud. Keep pointless things like that to yourself. Grimmjow's trying to concentrate."

"Seriously Shawlong? Get off of Grimmjow you kiss-up" replied Edorad, not taking Shawlong seriously.

"Yeah what's got you all mad Shawlong? I just want to fight anyone I can. I'm not that good with pesquisa though. Any of you guys want to tell me exactly which one is a Shinigami."

"As expected of you Di-Roy," said Shawlong with his arms crossed.

"Huh what's that supposed to mean? I can't remember the last time I fought a Shinigami. Got a problem with that? Ever since we became arrancar, you guys have treated me like some kind of Gillian!"

"I've got problems with a lot of things Di-Roy. Don't become the next one," said Shawlong with his eyes closed.

"Can't recognize Shinigami reiatsu? It's because he has a piece of his brain missing, so he's not fully functional and has both short and long-term memory loss," said Yylfordt referencing Di-Roy's missing mask piece.

"The poor thing should have stayed home and get more pity presents from Aizen-sama," continued Yylfordt to nobody in particular.

"Oh that's right, Aizen-sama did put you in charge of that Grand Fisher weakling and the other mindless Menos right? Then you had to go and get them killed. You really should have stayed at Los Noches instead of coming, but no, you had to beg," remarked Edorad.

"Pity presents? Really? That's all you've got Yylfordt? Oh, and Edorad, what are you talking about you idiot? I did what I was supposed to do. I broke Fisher's mask and turned him into an imperfect arrancar, then sent him and the other weird Gillian to this town. They were just test-dummies. Not only did I get valuable information for Aizen-sama from the _people that killed them_, but both of them died and I never have to see their faces again. That's not bad at all. The only downside was that I had to work with Yylfordt's creepy brother.

"Hey we all said not to bring that freak up again," said Yylfordt remembering the conversation they had earlier when they had first arrived in Karakura.

Either way it was annoying with Fisher following us around. All he did was talk about 'Kurosaki Ichigo this, and Kurosaki Ichigo that'. If you guys saw it as me getting a 'gift' then that shows your own jealousy. To me it was the worst punishment. Aisslinger and I couldn't even hang out properly with those goons following us. Not to mention how annoying it was that Demoura and him actually somehow got along. I was glad to get rid of him and that other Gillian. It couldn't even talk!"

Shawlong and Yylfordt had nothing to say to this. It was rare that Di-Roy could actually hold a logical argument, but it happened at times.

"You see Shawlong, this is why I said how I would have liked to fight the Kurosaki guy. It's because Fisher kept talking about him and drove me crazy till one day I woke up and said to myself, 'You know what? I wanna kill this Kurosaki guy myself'. Then I saw that even Yammy had a shot at the guy and got beat up himself. I'd almost say I'm embarrassed for him," said Edorad with a smirk.

"'Grand Fisher'? Isn't that one of those Shinigami code names? What kind of hollow willingly accepts a name that Shinigami assign to them anyway? I guess desperate low levels like him needed anything to fill the emptiness after eating the souls of people they formerly had connections to as humans. It reminds me how glad I am that arrancars like us don't have to eat much compared to normal hollows. His hollow transformation must have caused him to forget his name. Anyways Di-Roy, even if you didn't like them you must have felt important as if you had your own fraccion," said Shawlong provoking Di-Roy again just to see what he would say back.

"Hey, you idiots, what did I say about getting in my way? Instead of picking a target, you are having a stupid conversation. Why don't you just wait for the Shinigami to detect you and they can come after you themselves for all I care!" said a closed-eyed Grimmjow with a vein pulsing on his head.

Shawlong and the other fraccion sans Di-Roy however, actually kept their cool.

"On the contrary Grimmjow, I was talking simply because I already picked my target at random from when we first did pesquisa to search the town for more reiatsus. I don't really care who I fight, since they will die anyway. As for making sure we don't choose the same target, I'll make that clear now. My target is that way," he said pointing to the south-east from their position. "Nakeem, there's one for you too; though I'm sure we both picked the same two anyway. They feel pretty weak so we'll be finished with them shortly before going after anyone else who doesn't have one of us after them," he said to the silent arrancar who nodded.

"Hmm? That's good. My targets feel like they are in the next town over, to the west or something," said Edorad caressing the reiatsus he felt with his pesquisa.

"Eh, Nakeem and your targets are south-east Shawlong, and mine are completely to the east, so I guess there's no mix-up there," said Yylfordt in a bored tone.

"Huh? All I know is my target is in the same area Shawlong pointed to, though I'm sure it's a different person. It seems pretty weak though I don't care, as long as it's a Shinigami. I decided I don't need you guy's help after all. I can find Shinigamis myself. I'll just kill everyone with reiatsu like Grimmjow said until I find one. How's that?" asked Di-Roy with his usual grin.

"Alright, so everybody has a target, but even then, there are more reiatsus in this town than there is of us. We are bound to cross paths if we are to kill them all," said Shawlong.

"Huh? We'll figure something out. This is the type of plan with so many unknowns, that you can't plan to the end anyway. We'll just have to adapt. As for what I'll do? Let me worry about that," said Grimmjow rising up into the air.

"Then let's begin. Everyone locked onto one of them?" he said smirking. "Heh"

"Like I said before, show no mercy and don't hold back or worry about gender. If any of them show even a shred of spiritual energy then kill them! Don't let a single one escape," he said as they all turned to face their targets in battle positions as if ready to pounce on their prey.

"Let's go!" he shouted as all the fraccion burst away towards their respective targets.

* * *

><p>-<br>**Omake/Side story:**

**Earlier that morning**

Orihime's Rikka; Ayame and Shun'ō had went to Chad's house to heal him right after Orihime had sent them. They arrived at **8:35 A.M. **Twenty-five minutes after Orihime had sent them. It was a pretty impressive time they made. Considering Chad's house was on the polar opposite side of town from the school. The school was in the north-east corner, and Chad's house being in the south-west corner.

They arrived only to see Chad's closed door.

"Oh man, this problem again," said Shun'ō referencing the time at Yokosuka where Orihime had closed the door on them on accident.

"Um…Shun'ō, wasn't Orihime right back then when she said we should be able to just go through solid objects? We are not made made from atoms, but reishi after all."

"It's not that we aren't able to Ayame, it's that we don't know the technique to do so. Only shinigami know how to do such a thing. At least I've never heard of a hollow doing it," he said crossing his arms. "Aside from knowing our core abilities, we are in the same boat as Orihime as far as understanding our powers. It seems a zanpakutō knows everything about themselves, their wielder, and their power, while instead, we must work together with Orihime to find out more about ourselves and she herself,"

They flew down on a ledge and sat down.

"Shun'ō do you think Tsubaki is gone forever?" asked Ayame, her face hidden by her hood. Her expression unreadable.

"Ayame, if there is a way, we will find it. There has to be. It doesn't make sense that he would be gone forever. Even if we aren't the same as shinigami and zanpakutō, he should still exist. He _is_ a part of Orihime's soul just like we are. Orihime knows this as well which is the only reason I am able to say it myself. Ayame, we will get him back," said Shun'ō, his eyes opening wider revealing his pupils.

"Though for now, let's go fly around a bit and come back later when Sado-san is awake. This is a onetime chance after all," said Shun'ō, a smile appearing on his face complimenting his eye color.

Ayame giggled at Shun'ō's mischievous smirk as they flew off to explore Karakura town. "The Misadventures of Shun'ō and Ayame ™" began in earnest.

**6:02 PM later that night**

"So we are finally inside! Thanks for letting us in Sado-san," said Shun'ō.

They had managed to return after being distracted by all the fun they had to realize how much time had passed by. They were heading back to Chad's house when they saw him on the street. They caught him by surprise when they flew in front of him. The last time he had seen Orihime's Rikka like that were when they were training with Yoruichi when she was in cat form before going to Soul Society. Back then when they first started, Orihime explained what she knew of her powers, introducing each 'Rikka' individually. Chad was astonished that they all had personalities and such.

He tried to tell the Rikka he was fine and didn't need anymore healing, but caused them instead to sweatdrop when he staggered while trying to walk away. He gave in and continued walking back to his house with the Rikka, allowing them inside this time.

"Now please lay down so that we can finish healing your arm and get you back at full strength. Orihime has been worried about you if nobody else has."

"Hmm." Chad said lying down on his mat. _"It's not that everyone else isn't worried about me and only Inoue is as if they don't care, it's just that everybody assumes I'm fine I guess…which I am."_

"Alright, we use the kotodama right?" asked Ayame. "Yeah," replied Shun'ō. "_Let's see if this works. As long as it is Orihime's will it should…" _thought Shun'ō.

Ayame and Shun'ō positioned themselves before announcing in unison "Sōten Kisshun! I reject!" as they came together and created the healing shield over Chad's arm flying apart from each other.

The clock struck **6:03** as Chad looked out the window with a solemn expression. He heard the roar of the local trains passing by and the running of the river behind his house. Ideas and thoughts rummaged through his mind at the sounds.

**6:04****PM  
><strong>  
>Grimmjow arrived through a garganta near the top of Karakura Honchou District . He hears two humans arguing or talking in the distance. One of them is obnoxiously loud and for some reason his voice annoyed Grimmjow to no end.<p>

"Control yourself Grimmjow. You don't want to wake up the whole city just because you had to cero some human," said Grimmjow restraining himself as he looked away from the loud brown haired human. "Now I just have to wait for everyone else."

**6:20 PM  
>In the sky above the Kurosaki Clinic<strong>

Grimmjow's fraccion appear through a garganta.

"We are late," Shawlong announced to the world though he was just talking to the rest of the arrancar.

"I already told you, it's Di-Roy's fault. It's because of his begging to come. Then when we say he can come he says he has to go back and get his zanpakutō" complained Yylfordt.

"Huh? Come on guys, it's not the end of the world. You would have left this exact time anyway since we had to avoid being caught. You guys are starting to treat me like freaking Szayel Aporro or something.

"Huh? Who the heck is that?" asked Edorad in all seriousness.

"What kind of question is that? Yylfordt's brother! Though we kicked him out the group before we found Grimmjow remember!" shouted Di-Roy.

"A _brother_ huh?" said Yylfordt with a finger on his chin as if in deep thought. He was pleased with the intentional joke he made. "It's starting to ring a bell. No never mind, that's just my ears ringing from you screaming so close next to my FACE!" he shouted at Di-Roy.

"Stop playing dumb. Szayel Aporro is your brother and we kicked him out because he was a weakling. Now, let's locate Grimmjow," said Shawlong, annoyed that Di-Roy always started side conversations that distracted everyone.

"Weakling? He's the Octava-" taunted Di-Roy only to get kicked in the mask by Yylfordt.

"Yes 'weakling'! That weakling is nothing without his precious lab! If I was a science freak like him or had my own special environment at Las Noches, a person like me would be 'Primera'. That's how _weak_ he is!" shouted Yylfordt.

Meanwhile Di-Roy wasn't enjoying the treatment his mask had just received from Yylfordt's shoe as he fixed the bandages. Shawlong face palmed from this interaction, a vein beginning to pulse. A dark aura began to surround Nakeem from having to witness Di-Roy's antics.

"Di-Roy. No more bringing up that trash. I've located Gimmjow, now let's go," said Shawlong under strained breath yet keeping his eternal cool demeanor.

"'Trash'? Since when did you start channeling Ulquiorra, Shawlong?" asked Di-Roy with his smirk before following the other fraccion and Shawlong into the sky.

* * *

><p>==========================================<br>**Author's Note:**

**Chapter started:** **Saturday,****August****20,****2011,****11:45:45 PM est  
>Chapter finished: Saturday, September 3, 2011, 5:45:00 PM est<br>Revisions: 8/20-9/10, 10/1**

*I'm now running into trouble with the dates. When Orihime went back to school after the conflict with Yammy and Ulq, it was said she missed school for 5 days. Alright so the fight with Yammy and Ulq took place after school on Sep 3rd. So she missed 5 days of school after that. It would at least put her going back to school on the 9th, but I'm not even counting weekends so it could go higher, plus I'm not sure if they go to school on Saturday or not, so it could go even higher.

This has been bugging me. All the big bleach time lines have the date Hitsu and co come to Ichigo's school as sep 7th and I'm like 0_0. What? So I've put 7th since that is what everyone else says until further notice. I also changed how I would write Orihime's flashbacks for this chapter because of this.

Please clarify me on this.

Tessai liking Orihime's cooking comes from the bount fillers. Yes as I was writing this chapter I realized Orihime's birthday was on September 3rd. What a horrible birthday she had. Also when writing the rikka interaction this chapter I made it mirror Ichigo's blaming of himself in case you cared.

Also, the sun sets pretty early in Japan compared to where I live. When I went to Japan I was surprised at how early the sun set. I was there around the end of December and the sun began setting around the end of 4:00 throughout 5:00-6.  
>In September the sun sets later which happens to be the month the story takes place in right now, so I made it around 6 when the sun was setting when Orihime was talking to Sora.<p>

The map of Karakura town was useful for many things such as Shawlong pointing out the direction in which he felt his targets were at, the reasoning for why I think Keigo and Mizuiro got home so late compared to the other characters, etc. It is a nice reference for this part of the plot as well. Seeing where all of the characters are at when the arrancar attack, etc.

I checked how long it took to build the underground training room at Urahara's and remembered he said he built in a 1 day and 1 night. It was based off of the one that Ichigo used for bankai training in Soul Society. The pills Orihime took are probably similar to the ones Ichigo took to recover(the ones in the bottle with the skull and crossbones) after he got beat by Byakuya when Renji and him took Rukia back to SS.

**From the Omake:**

QUOTE: "A _brother_ huh?" said Yylfordt with a finger on his chin as if in deep thought. He was pleased with the intentional joke he made.  
>-That was referring to how Yylfordt always calls people 'brother', and the topic of discussion happened to actually be his brother.<p>

QUOTE: "Trash? Since when did you start channeling Ulquiorra, Shawlong?" asked Di-Roy with his smirk before following the other fraccion and Shawlong into the sky.  
>-Yes, Di-Roy made an Ulquiorra joke.<p>

**Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.**


	5. Place and Purpose

Author's Note at bottom as always. I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. This chapter had been beta'd by the amazing HokkaidoMaster. You have been a wonderful help to me, if you are reading this again after beta-ing it. If anyone likes the Percy Jackson series, be sure to check out HokkaidoMaster's fics for sure. One important thing I've learned besides correct comma placement, is that semi-colons and colons are magical. To everyone else, please help me determine if the start date should be the 7th or the 8th or the 9th so I can make revisions. More info on that in the AN for last chapter. Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.

* * *

><p>Place and Purpose<p>

**September 7th***

**8:24 PM. Orihime and Rangiku had finished eating dinner.  
><strong>

"Whoa, we ate so fast. I guess this is what they mean when they say 'comfort eating'," said Orihime with stars in her eyes.

Orihime had vented her confused feelings to Rangiku before both of their stomachs had growled extremely loudly at the same time, signaling that they needed food quickly as possible. Orihime had gotten out dinner that she had prepared the previous night. She had cooked for the week over her five day break from school.

"Aaaah. Man I'm so stuffed I feel great! This was great Orihime!"

Orihime almost dropped her dishes at this new revelation.

"Wha? You really mean that?" she asked in surprise and excitement.

"Yeah really! Now, I'm not going to lie. It looked really freaky, but it tasted really good. My philosophy is, I figure I shouldn't care how food looks since it isn't my eyes that have tongues after all," explained Rangiku.

Orihime was swayed and reaffirmed by this "logic".

"That's great! I cook so much, but nobody ever eats anything I make! That's why I have so many leftovers. I was starting to wonder if I had an off sense of taste or something. You are right! People shouldn't judge food only on how it looks unless they can taste with their eyes!" said the chestnut-brown haired girl. Her eyes shone with confidence before she began picturing tongue-like appendages in place of eyelashes as her vision for "eye-tongues". They functioned as tongues and eye-lashes. For the first time in a while Orihime recoiled from her own overactive imagination.

_"Ok…changing the subject," _she thought. "Oh, um, do you want some ice-cream Rangiku-san?" she asked getting up with a long stack of dishes in her arms. Rangiku had given her somebody else to talk to besides herself and her Rikka. The Rikka didn't really count since they were a part of her anyway, so having Rangiku to talk to was very healing for her. She was like a person Orihime could vest her feelings in and go to for advice. It only took a short while for her to feel this way about the vice-captain. She wanted to tell the shinigami everything; from how she felt after battling the arrancar, and losing Tsubaki, to wanting to get stronger and improve her abilities.

"You know it!" answered Rangiku as Orihime took the dishes in another room and came back with multiple ice cream cups and various toppings and assortments on a red plate, placing it on the table.

Orihime was excited to have a willing partaker in her culinary antics. Usually, it was Tatsuki who enjoyed...or rather ate Orihime's cooking, but the girl never ate it as much as Rangiku had.

"You see, ice cream tastes much better when you put toppings on it. This is the ultimate ice cream philosophy!" said Orihime her eyes burning with excited passion.

"So help yourself!" she said with a bright smile.

In about 24.58 seconds, both of them had their ice creams customized to the max with different flavor combinations and topping and assortments on top. To place a name on either of the newly created flavors would put even the extremely long titles of a Japanese anime episode title to shame.

They both simultaneously took their first bite. "Mmm! YU~MMY!" they said in unison as if rehearsed.

"Hey Orihime what did you put on yours? Maybe we can mix things up even more?"

"What did I put on mine? Well that's asking for a really really long answer, but for starters I put some of this. Do you want to try it?" asked Orihime.

"Eh? That's a crazy color, but just crazy enough to taste amazing!" said Rangiku putting a smudge of what Orihime offered her on her dessert before taking another bite.

"Whoa that made it taste way better," said Rangiku in astonishment.

"See? I told you!" said Orihime.

"All this time, living, hundreds of years without knowing the true potential that existed for food in general. Let alone just how much the tastebuds could take at once!. This! We could get this down to a science Orihime and then! Then spread our food manifesto throughout the lands!"

"Rangiku-san, I think we should stick to calling it a philosophy like before," said Orihime sweat**-**dropping, though in her mind she was thinking of she and Rangiku traveling the world, awakening the 'lost senses of the taste**-**buds' of the masses together as super hero scientists…...on their own hit TV show where they battle the evil global organization of chef/ninja-samurais who want to keep the general populace from knowing the true potential of taste so they could continue to extort them to buying their food, thus make extremely high profit off of low quality food while bidding out their true culinary masterpieces on the black market. Extorting a basic human right like the sense of taste! It was a conspiracy! Rangiku interrupted Orihime's rapidly evolving daydream, ignorant of what was going on in the girl's mind.

"Hmm? Not liking the manifesto thing huh? I thought I sounded cool though," she said with a slight pout. "Either way, you have to give me some recipes or something!" she said with wide eyes.

"Rangiku-san," said Orihime simply and in a monotone voice. A shadow covered her eyes making them unable to be seen. Rangiku shifted at the change in tone.

"First rule of the 'Philosophy of Food Preparation'," she began.

_"It has a such a proper title now?" _thought Rangiku sweat dropping. Suddenly Orihime's brown eyes became visible and they were glowing as though on fire.

"There are no 'recipes'! It's all improv! You just make whatever you feel like with what you have! You know, like uh…how did Tatsuki-chan and Michiru-chan describe it?" asked Orihime putting her hand on her head in thought. "Um..Yeah just 'throwing stuff together' is basically what it is! Though you could say there's an art to the 'throwing' part also" she finished, slamming her fist into her palm after making hand gestures somehow describing what she was saying perfectly.

_"So now it's a both a science and there's an art form to the making of a meal? Wait I thought we agreed it doesn't matter how food looked? I guess she's referring to the actual preparation and not the end result. Though why make the cooking look pretty and not the final meal? She says it's all improv, but I'm starting to think she meant it literally, including everything she's saying right now-Wait? Why am I questioning her? When it comes down to it, she still made this food. So who cares if her back stories and the 'making of' don't make sense?" _reasoned Rangiku inside her mind.

As soon as the thoughts convulsed across Rangiku's brain, spiritual pressure hit both her and Orihime like a wall.

"What is this? It feels like…!" said an alarmed Rangiku taking out her denreishinki.

"One, two …no there's six of them! So many!" said Rangiku looking at the yellow triangles on her screen before she picked out the path of two of them coming right in the direction of the dot that symbolized her location on the screen.

"They're coming straight here!" her eyes widened at how fast they had locked onto their position making a straight path towards them.

Orihime had been sitting there quietly listening the whole time. She felt the pressure as soon as Rangiku did, but she did not question the source in shock like Rangiku had. She had already known from her previous encounter that it was the familiar turbulent pressure of an arrancar. She had been shocked, but it was only because of the sudden appearance of the pressure catching her off guard. Hearing what Rangiku had been saying, however brought her into focus. At least she thought so, until she saw the vice-captain bring out what looked like a candy dispenser and pop the 'candy' in her mouth.

Rangiku's material body fell backwards as her spiritual form came out of it in with an electrical-like pulsation.

However Orihime was shocked when Rangiku's body stood up from its crouched position.

"Momone! Stay here with Orihime until further orders. I'm heading to Captain Hitsugaya!" she said running out the front door and disappearing in a burst of shunpo, though Orihime could feel that she was on the roof with Tōshirō like she said. It all happened so quickly that Orihime wasn't even able to get a word in until she was out of earshot.

"Wait Rangiku-san!" she yelled to no avail only to be held back by Rangiku's body.

"It's the same as last time! No it's worse! If Rangiku-san's right, then there are six of them, and they are all around town. Last time, countless people died with just two of them! What if they do the same again?" said Orihime talking to herself thinking back to how all those souls were sucked out of Yumisawa district.. Just then spiritual pressure crested on top of the roof.

"If all six of them do that again from all over town, they could wipe out over half of the town," Orihime continued as she then began to escape the grip of the soul inside Rangiku's body. It was difficult with only one free arm, the other wrapped in a cast, and she succeeded, only to be kicked in the head with the flat of a foot, making her fall down on the floor.

"Huh? What's with all the pulling? No I take that question back. What's with all the talking to yourself? Hello? I'm right here. Talk to me besh.

"Eh? What's 'besh'?" asked Orihime getting up rubbing her head before her eyes widened.

_"Sado-kun's spiritual pressure just jumped up high and then lowered again back to normal, though it feels like he has his arm activated. What are Ayame and __Shun'ō__ doing right now? Kurosaki-kun is there too. Are they about to fight together…no Sado-kun's pressure doesn't feel like he's about to fight. Now it feels he's leaving where Kurosaki-kun is. Where's he going?" _thought Orihime, while still focusing on her conversation with the entity in Rangiku's 'body'_.  
><em>  
>"No, more importantly, what in the world are you!" she asked pointing her finger. She had been surprised when Rangiku's body had gotten up after Rangiku had left it, but didn't pay much attention to it. Though sensing a different presence, hearing a different voice, and having different mannerisms and eyes surprised the young girl.<p>

"Huh? You're just noticing me? You're a pretty scatterbrained girl. Didn't you hear her say my name? I am Momone. A gikon or 'soul candy'. We are temporary souls to hold the place of a shinigami in their gigai while they do things like fight. It is the body I'm in now, besh."

Orihime took in this information. _"Gigai huh? I guess that's the name for the bodies shinigami use. To tell the truth, I never really thought much about it, let alone how it worked. Now that I think about it, since shinigami and other pluses are like ghosts, one would think they could poses objects, so why not empty bodies? Come to think of it, Kuchiki-san used a gigai when she first came here, and temporary souls? Is it like the one the lives inside Kurosaki-kun's lion plush doll? Ah! That must've been the one who kissed Tatsuki that time...," _thought Orihime putting it together retrospectively. She'd actually forgotten all about that.

"Anyway, why do you want to go outside? You'll just get in the way of Rangiku-sama and Tōshirō. We are safer in here. What exactly do you plan to do? Run outside and get taken hostage or something? Its one thing to want to help, but another to know your place, besh." said Momone.

Orihime subconsciously noted how there was no "-sama" for Tōshirō unlike Rangiku and how she used his first name.

"That's enough. Please don't lecture me," monotonously said Orihime while sitting down, her face unreadable. "I know my place in this fight. I don't even have Tsubaki to fight with. My place right now is on the sidelines. Sado-kun already told me 'only I could heal the hurt', so that's what I plan to do, but still…." She trailed off. At this point she wasn't really talking to Momone or herself, but just talking out loud. "Sitting on the sidelines is so hard," she said, her face turning into an unusual frustrated frown. She began trying to concentrate better on the spiritual pressure around the town.

"Sitting on the sidelines is hard? You say that like you want to be a fighter and get hurt on a daily basis. Ya' got some kind of death wish or are you just a wannabe daredevil masochist? Just looking at you I can tell you don't have the mental capacity to kill. You just aren't 'the type'. If you can heal like you say, then why don't you focus on that?" suggested Momone. This momentarily broke Orihime's attention on the pressures around town.

"You're wrong! I won't focus only on healing because healing isn't my only power!"

"Alright, maybe you have killed a hollow or two, and I don't really know you, but you don't seem like you'd be reliable whenever the time called for you to kill something. Maybe it's just me. Plus, since you don't have this Tsubaki thing, you can't fight right? So for now why not focus on what you can do. Right now healing is all you are good for," said Momone. Unlike before, she now had Orihime's full attention.

"Even if you had your 'Tsubaki', that wouldn't make you 'the type' for combat. Healing may not be your only power as you say, but it is still your power all the same. No matter what other powers you used to have, or will have in the future; you should still focus mostly on the healing. This is even truer now that you have no offensive power. Healing is much more important than fighting abilities. The reason you should focus on it, is because it is the most important ability of all. You should listen to this Sado person. He knows what he is talking about. Yeah, sounds harsh, but I'm telling the truth. It's good for you, plus your moping around is starting to be annoying besh. Man what the heck did Rangiku-sama eat that left such a nasty aftertaste," asked Momone picking her teeth with her fingernail as if rambling on like that didn't even require a second thought.

"It's just that everyone, they are always protecting me. Protecting me like I'm some powerless being. It's not their fault though. It's mine. 'If someone is weak, they need protection', is the rationale right? Kurosaki-kun, Ishida-kun, Sado-kun, and I were all nakama, but now everything is falling apart. Ishida-kun has been…and Sado-kun and I…we can't even help or protect ourselves anymore, let alone others. Now Kurosaki-kun is fighting all alone. He doesn't have anyone right now except…Kuchiki-san," she said the last part quietly.

"Eh? You're right. The Kuchiki girl just won it all earlier if you didn't notice."

"What? That's not what I mea-" said Orihime before feeling what Momone was saying. Rukia's spiritual pressure was slowly balancing off as if she had pulled off a great attack. She was not even able to sense the arrancar she had been fighting previously. Not a trace of spiritual pressure left. They were completely destroyed, and it didn't feel like she had gotten so much as a scratch.

"So strong…so this is Kuchiki-san's true power," said Orihime in amazement. Her eyes closed focusing on the spiritual pressure around town once again.

After feeling this, she felt Rukia's pressure immediately drop before taking notice of an even larger reiatsu that had been present the entire time.

_"The one with this huge reiatsu must have attacked Rukia...wait, now Kurosaki-kun is fighting it!"_ thought Orihime before looking back at Momone, a brief silence before speaking.

"Momone-san, you are right. I came to the same conclusion already myself, so I don't know why I had a negative spell earlier. Everyone is fighting, and if I just go and get myself killed, I won't be of any help to anyone. I can heal. I can save people. That's my place in this fight!" said Orihime, determination on her face. She was confident once again.

Momone did a smirk at this, and then Orihime continued talking.

"Yes, I agree with you Momone-san. Right now, at this point in time, it's in the best interest for both me and everyone else that I don't go out and get hurt in vain. I should focus on healing right now, but…" she stood up from where she was sitting, opening her eyes and closing her fists.

"I will never give up on getting Tsubaki back! Never! As long as the Rikka and I exist, he can't just disappear from my soul! I will find a way to bring him back, and develop him to the fullest until I _can_ be offensive! Not offensive as a last resort, but instead because I would have the choice of attacking or not attacking! I will still have to sit on the sidelines at times. Not because I would be too weak to fight, but because I simply chose to sit on the sidelines for that particular battle!" said Orihime. This time it was her that had the floor as Momone looked at her.

"I heal with Shun'ō and Ayame using Sōten Kisshun, shield with Hinagiku, Baigon, and Lily using Santen Kesshun, and attack with Tsubaki using Koten Zanshun. All of these techniques are my ability with the Shun Shun Rikka. I will neglect none of them! They all have a time and place to be used. Healing is needed now and forever, but attacking will always be needed as well no matter what you say. There is no 'focusing "only" or "mostly" on the healing' or any other aspect. T-That's...That's like eating and trying to make the fat go to only one area or something!" said Orihime emphatically trying to make the now sweatdropping Momone understand.

"If I get stronger, I must get stronger with the 'Shun Shun Rikka'. Not, 'get stronger with Ayame and Shun'ō'," concluded Orihime with finality.

Momone looked bored as she then began picking something out of her ear. "Eh? Quit getting heated for no reason. Just wait a sec, we're on the same page here. I never said to completely give up on the Tsubaki guy; I said to focus on healing for 'now' since you don't have the Tsubaki guy instead of moping that everybody gets to fight instead of you in this specific battle…Well I guess I did say even if you had the Tsubaki guy, that you should still focus on healing. Fine then, I was wrong for saying that specific part besh."

At that moment, they felt Rangiku's pressure drop to almost nothing.

"R-Rangiku-san!" said Orihime running out the door that was still open from Rangiku's sudden departure.

"Hey come back girl!" Momone ran after Orihime, also extremely worried about the tenth division vice-captain herself.

Orihime couldn't get to the roof from the entrance to her apartment on the second floor, so she ran back down to the street level. But Momone quickly caught up with her and restrained her, putting her arm around Orihime's chest and shoulders, not choking her, but for restraint.

Ice fell from the sky and hit the pavement as Orihime looked up. Tōshirō was having a difficult time with his opponent. They were up in the sky while Rangiku appeared and felt unconscious on the roof of a parking garage not far from her apartment. Her opponent seemed disinterested in her, choosing instead to watch his companion's fight.

"Rangiku-san…Tōshirō-kun. They're both in trouble. What do we do Momone-san?"

"We wait and see what happens. If we go up there, or they notice us, we would be in the way. You need to understand that being in the way is worse than not being involved at all."

Momone's words struck a chord with Orihime.

"I get it, but what do you mean 'wait'? The arrancar could kill Rangiku-san any moment!" contested Orihime.

"Feel their reiatsus. Tōshirō's specifically. Does that really feel like a captain fighting? I know you probably haven't had much experience in fighting, but you've had to have been around captains. Even though they probably weren't fighting and their reiatsu's were lower than Tōshirō's is right now. That's only because he is fighting, and they weren't, but you could still feel their reiatsu and tell they are stronger than what Tōshirō is showing right now. I'll give you a hint. It's not because he's tired," said Momone as if on cue when Tōshirō began ironically panting profusely.

"Are you saying he's holding back? Why would he do that? Not to mention why would Rangiku do that? She's unconscious!"

"What? Feel her reiatsu too. She's fine. As for why they would do that? There's no way I'm spoiling the fight. Just watch and see," said Momone with a knowing smile.

"Spoil? This is serious. This isn't some movie where we know the ending!" reasoned Orihime.

Tōshirō had used his tail to attack the arrancar, but it failed and only froze his arm a little bit. They talked for a while and then suddenly the arrancar's reiatsu rose substantially as he yelled out something neither Momone nor Orihime could hear. The smoke cleared revealing the arrancar had done some form of transformation. In an instant, Tōshirō was busting at the seams with blood as the arrancar appeared behind him. He then suddenly charged at the arrancar who charged in return, raking his ice wings with its claws. After a brief standoff, with the arrancar shaking the stray ice off of his claws, while Tōshirō regenerated his wings, they began talking.

"Hold on girl, I'm going to listen to what they are saying," said Momone.

"Wha? You can do that? You'd have to have like, super-hearing though," said a surprised Orihime.

"Huh? Be quiet I'm trying to hear. Only a mod-soul can have things like 'super hearing'; I can only hear them because this gigai has advanced hearing and other senses built into it. Got it?" explained Momone as she closed her eyes harder trying to hear.

Orihime got the message and decided to ask what exactly 'mod-souls' were later. After a while, there was a silence. Momone occasionally opened her eyes during this time and surprise showed on her face. When the silence was up Momone began talking seriously and quickly as if reciting from a paper, as Tōshirō clashed with his opponent.

"The one Tōshirō is fighting is an arrancar named Shawlong Qufang. He's the 'eleventh arrancar'. Arrancars are numbered one-ten and eleven to apparently infinity. The ones in the latter group are called Números and the number represents their order of birth from hollows to arrancar from use of the hougyoku. The ones numbered through ten however are the strongest. They are called Espada, rule over the Números, and have been numbered accordingly. Though I'm not sure exactly what the order is for strength; all I know is that there is an arrancar here among the six that came here named Grimmjow. He's apparently the Sexta Espada which means he's number six. Like I said, I don't know if the order goes from greatest to least, or least to greatest, but from the feel of things, that person is the one that attacked Kuchiki and is fighting Ichigo right now," said Momone with a grim contemplative look on her face.

During the explanation, Ichigo's reiatsu flickered abruptly, but at that moment, his reiatsu abruptly skyrocketed.

"That's Kurosaki-kun's bankai. It feels even darker than before," said Orihime remembering how Ichigo had clutched his face and his reiatsu had fluctuated through all the different shades on the color scale she had made.

Rangiku's reiatsu abruptly flickered for a moment.

"Ah, finally here it comes. Don't ask any questions, just watch," said Momone with a beaming smirk as though she was about to get to the climax of a highly anticipated movie.

Then Rangiku's voice could be heard shouting. She had the arrancar's foot being held with only her forearm.

"Captain! Renji! Permission for Gintei Kaijou had been approved! Go full power!" she shouted into a communicator.

"What? So they were holding back, but wh-!" started Orihime only to have her mouth covered by Momone.

"I'm starting to think you really do have hearing problems. First you couldn't hear Rangiku-sama say my name and then you can't hear simple instructions, besh," she said amongst Orihime's muffled protests before continuing.

"Though it seems you have selective hearing since you heard Rangiku-sama say that Gintei Kaijou has been approved. It is just like the name says: a 'limit release'."

"GINTEI KAIJOU!" shouted Rangiku.

"GINTEI KAIJOU!" shouted Tōshirō.

Immediately after shouting it, their reiatsus literally skyrocketed. They literally became visible and rocketed into the night sky in huge explosive auras like pressurized water bursting from a geyser. Shawlong and the other arrancar had shock and confusion scribbled on their faces.

In the distance they could feel Renji's reiatsu do the same thing.

"Now listen up," said Momone still holding her hand over Orihime's mouth.

"Gintei Kaijou. In order for captains and lieutenants or vice-captains of the Gotei 13 to prevent unnecessary stimulus on the human world, they get emblems of their divisions placed on their bodies that act as a seal. It drastically lower's their spiritual pressure by a ratio of eighty percent. In other words, right now, everybody is five times stronger!"

Orihime's eyes widened at this reveal.

Rangiku's opponent went in to punch her, but she blocked with her zanpaktou shocking the arrancar. After a while, the arrancar disappeared and reappeared behind Rangiku attempting to punch her again only for her to reappear behind him as his punch hit open air. Blood exploded from the left side of his body on both front and back down to his abdomen.

"The arrancar used its high speed movement called sonido, but Rangiku-sama countered with shunpo. It seems they are the same, yet a little different. Now Rangiku-sama just released Haineko, her zanpakutō," commented Momone, filling in Orihime, who could see Tōshirō's fight, but not hear what was being said in the fight above, nor see Rangiku as she was on the roof.

Tōshirō then began to take up the offensive, preparing a Ryuusenka attack.

"Oooh! Both a Ryuusenka attack, and a released Haineko? Both of those arrancars are good as dead besh," said Momone.

"Retreat! Retreat for now!" yelled Shawlong at Nakeem as he fled away from Hitsugaya and Nakeem fled from the clutches Rangiku's Haineko.

Their attempt at escape at that point was futile. Tōshirō went in hot pursuit after Shawlong, quickly catching up with him as he turned around only to be stabbed through the collar bone and partially through the neck. As Ryuusenka's effect took place, the eleventh arrancar became completely encased in a giant shard of ice before it exploded with brilliant force leaving nothing behind but ice particles.

Nakeem had jumped up away from the ash of Haineko, but Rangiku simply used shunpo and used Haineko's increased cutting power to completely bifurcate Nakeem on his right side from the edge of the right shoulder past the end of his right leg. There was never any escape. Nakeem fell down on the roof lifeless.

Meanwhile, the wind from the Ryuusenka explosion encompassed the roof. Tōshirō's wings cracked as blood abruptly burst from his body and he fell all the way down on top of the parking garage roof.

"Captain! Captain!" Rangiku's screams could be heard.

"Orihme! Orihime, please come quickly!" she yelled from the edge of the top floor of the parking garage before going back up to the roof.

Orihime broke free of Momone's grasp and ran up to the entrance to the parking garage.

"Hmm? Rangiku-sama must be scatterbrained too. She could have just taken the girl up there. By the way King, that's a sucky hiding spot," she said addressing King. He was the gikon that was currently in Tōshirō's gigai.

King raised his head with the top of the garbage can rising with it.

"Your logic is flawed. There was a 97% probability that this specific area was safe from arrancar detection. This was the best place for retreating. Your spot had a 53.6% detection rate. Too risky," said King only for the trash can to be casually pushed over by Momone's foot.

"What the-? That's why I think you are annoying. You talk like you are really smart, but in the end you are just silly. Also, where the heck did you even get those percentages? 53.6? Why the '.6'? You can't calculate a stable probability in a situation with so many variables anyway. See? I can be smart too, now come on! Let's follow the girl up to the roof! Tōshirō will be irked that his body smells like garbage when he gets back into it," said Momone with a laugh as she grabbed King's arm and they ran into the parking garage.

Orihime had somehow made it up near the top in record time. When she got to the second to last floor, Rangiku shunpo'ed and grabbed her taking her up to the roof. Tōshirō looked worse for wear. His eyelids were almost completely closed, but you could still see that his pupils were rolled back into his head. Blood was still seeping out his wounds. Meanwhile Nakeem had just finished decomposing into spirit particles.

"Just hang on Tōshirō-kun!" said Orihime kneeling to his left.

"Alright Orihime. I'm going to go get Kuchiki and be back quickly. Everything should be alright now. The only people left fighting are Ichigo and the last arrancar. He doesn't seem to be doing well at all. She should be around where they are fighting! I feel that her gikon is with her."

"Be careful Rangiku-san!" said Orihime before Rangiku disappeared in a burst of shunpo.

"Alright, time to heal-but Shun'ō and Ayame aren't back yet! I need them!" realized Orihime before focusing. Her fists clenched, her eyes closed tight.

"AYAME! SHUN'Ō!" she shouted into the sky before a trail of bright light appeared signaling their arrival, as they flew into Orihime's face and knocked her over. "Oomf!" she yelled falling over.

"Wha!" exclaimed Ayame getting up.

"What just happened? asked Orihime quickly getting up as well.

"Eh? That's my line," said Shun'ō rubbing his face. "We were flying to you at top seed and almost here, but then all of a sudden we flew into your face."

"Uh, at least now we know we can be used for long range use," said Ayame, her hood making a shadow across her face.

"Yeah you're right, but anyway we can ask questions later, lets heal this guy," said Shun'ō looking at Ayame who nodded her head. "Ready when you are Orihime," said Shun'ō.

"Uh, right!" said Orihime regaining her composure." Sōten Kisshun!" all three of them yelled together as they did when they used the technique for the first time. Ayame and Shun'ō formed the arcing shield over Tōshirō's entire body. His wounds began reversing themselves rather quickly as Orihime closed her eyes.

_"Kurosaki-kun has stopped fighting. It feels like his opponent that Momone called Grimmjow has too, and now it feels like Grimmjow is leaving with somebody else. That other reiatsu leaving with him feels familiar though,_" thought Orihime. _"It's a soul reaper's and it feels strong, yet calm somehow. How did he get here? I didn't sense any Senkaimon open up...Whatever is open now isn't Senkaimon and now it's presence is gone along with the espada and the shinigami as if it has closed," _she continued sensing for a couple minutes before realizing something._ "Ah, so Rangiku-san got to Kuchiki-san quickly after all. I didn't even feel when she did. I can feel her coming back now. She'll be here any minute" _she thought before turning her attention to Tōshirō.

"Um..can you guys hear me when we are healing?" she asked not knowing whether to expect an answer or not. She had never really talked to the Rikka individually while using one of their techniques before.

"Yes," said Ayame. "Loud and clear," echoed Shun'ō.

"Ah, that's good. I wanted to talk about when I called you guys here. It was like I was summoning you from your hairpins or something. The bright light appeared and everything. Though it's different, since you guys were out of the hairpins already, but you came back in the same bright light as if you were returning to the hairpins, but you didn't go back _into_ the hairpins. It's strange," said Orihime with a perplexed look, one hand concentrating on the shield.

"Yeah, when materializing out of our hairpins we come out in a sort of flashing pulse, and when turning back into our hairpin piece, we do the same. Though this time since we were far away and you called us, I feel it's like you still summoned us, just instead of coming from the hair pins, we came from farther away. It's like you 're-summoned' us or something …," said Shun'ō trailing off. Neither his nor Ayame's faces could be seen. They were inside their wing-like appendages like the Rikka normally were when using a technique.

"Uh that makes sense I guess," said Orihime still a little confused.

As soon as she finished that sentence, Tōshirō abruptly got up.

"Huh?" he got up with a confused look before falling back down wincing in pain.

"W-w-wait Tōshirō-kun! I have to finish healing you" said Orihime in surprise. She then decided to explain things to the shinigami captain before he got back up again and started asking questions. He seemed confused and disoriented. It was to be expected from being healed in such a fast and more importantly, different way. She assumed the mind had to sort of catch up with the fact that it wasn't injured anymore.

"You beat the arrancar and now I'm healing you. Rangiku-san went to get Kuchiki-san, and all the other arrancars are defeated, but the one Kurosaki-kun was fighting left with someone whose reiatsu was like a shinigami, I think," explained Orihime.

Tōshirō somehow managed to digest this information. Most likely because the rate of healing was increasing exponentially and it had helped him manage to clear his mind and think straight.

_"Shinigami? Could it be Aizen? No, he wouldn't come just to retrieve an arrancar. Especially if he has what sounds like an entire army like Shawlong suggested. No. Most likely it was Tousen if it was a shinigami," _thought Tōshirō.

"So everyone is alright then? Oh, and its Captain Hitsugaya to you," said Tōshirō. Orihime nodded in return, a focused smile on her face as she continued healing. Meanwhile, a lethargic look was on Tōshirō's face, but you could see the concern if you looked hard enough. Orihime knew he wasn't one, but seeing somebody who looked like a child take so much on by themselves, really got to her. She wasn't really sure if he was as old as she thought he was anyways. He could have died at the age he looked right now after all. Either way she wondered what his story was. How he came to be who he was.

After a couple more seconds, Orihime dispelled the shield.

"T-that's it?" he asked standing up looking at his hands and examining himself.

"Uh-huh. You should be fine now if you just want to walk around Tōshirō-kun. I can keep going if you want me too. It's very hard for me to heal wounds that have arrancar reiatsu in them, but the one you fought wasn't as strong as the ones Sado-kun and I fought. I could tell after I started healing you. Plus having experience healing Sado-kun's arm helped me heal faster I guess," she said with a smile.

_"Yeah, I healed Sado-kun, back then when he got hurt, but it was Ayame and __Shun'ō who finished healing him. It seems they took a long time to finish since it took them all day, but maybe it's because I wasn't physically there? I felt them healing when I was talking to Sora earlier. Did they only just start healing then? Either way, it was hard to heal Sado-kun's arm both of these times, yet I healed Tōshirō's wounds so quickly. Well Sado-kun's injuries were different and the one that fought him was stronger and I got experience from healing that so…," _thought Orihime rationalizing over it again until she felt two familiar reiatsus. There was a third one, but she assumed with was the gikon that Rangiku had refered to earlier.

Orihime looked up to see Rangiku landing with Rukia in her arms. Rukia's gigai was clinging to her back.

"Sorry. It took a little longer getting back carrying two people, and I was kind of injured, but here she is," said Rangiku placing Rukia on the ground.

"On the way back, it felt like Captain Tousen came and got the person Ichigo was fighting. I passed Renji by on the way going there and told him I would take Kuchiki back here with me. Both Ichigo and Renji are probably coming back here right now" she said to Orihime and her captain before taking notice of his blemish-less form. He was positively sparkling more than Yumichika on one of his '_good days_'.

"Captain. You're healed so fast!" yelled Rangiku in surprise.

"Yeah. Inoue Orihime has quite impressive healing capabilities. Even more so than I had imagined. Oh, and that reaction was really late Matsumoto," he taunted turning away so that his vice-captain couldn't see his face.

Momone and King had just finished coming up the stairs.

"Ah Rangiku-sama, Tōshirō! We finally made it despite this idiot complaining about not wanting to go up the stairs because of the percentage of injuries that happen on stairs and the probability of the same happening to him," said Momone dragging King across the roof with one arm, and a box in the other.

"We also went back and got first aide stuff just in case besh!" said Momone as she handed it to Rangiku.

"Good job Momone," said Rangiku, pleased with her gikon.

"Inoue-san. Thank you for healing me, but you don't have to finish. You said I was fine to walk around. Go ahead and heal Kuchiki. Momone and King can help me bandage the rest. If you really insist on finishing, then do it after you've healed everybody else" said Tōshirō as he sat down and took off his captain's haori, then the kosode, and white shitagi. Then his expression became pained as if he just remembered something. Orihime got to work on Rukia.

"Sōten Kisshun!" she said as her two Rikka once again formed the healing shield. It enveloped Rukia and her wounds began reversing. Her gikon in her gigai was watching with tears and a childish expression.

"Oh and Momone it's 'Captain Hitsugaya' to you!" said the captain, finally getting out what he had been trying to remember to say.

"Eh, what's this 'to you' supposed to mean besh? I never pictured you'd be the elitist type just because you're a captain _Tōshirō,_" said Momone with a scowl to the chagrin of Tōshirō who had just spawned a newly pulsing vein.

"Momone, quit messing with Captain and wrap his bandages already," said Rangiku in an uninterested tone before looking at King. "We've got more important things to do like giving his gigai a bath. Where did you go to end up smelling like that King!" said Rangiku holding her nose.

Tōshirō was too distracted by the thought of Rangiku and Momone cleaning his gigai to be mad at King for getting his gigai dirty in the first place.

"There's no way you two are touching my body! End of discussion!" he said fuming.

"Captain, you pervert, we just want to clean the gigai! It's not your actual body anyway," said Rangiku in her taunting/mocking tone. A tone worthy of praise by none other than the master of mocking, Ichimaru Gin himself.

"Yeah, what a dirty mind for a kid. See what I did there? 'Dirty'?" suggested Momone explaining her pun/joke while finishing up her mummification of Tōshirō's torso with the bandages.

"Morons! Stop trying to make _me _seem perverted! I'm saying King can clean the gigai himself!" rebutted the 10th division captain.

"What? No way! If he takes a bath, he'll probably read the packaging on the soap box and complain that only 99.9% of germs are killed by the soap, and be stuck on that for hours. That's his level of OCD!" reasoned Momone only for a dark aura to surround King.

"The soap _purposely _leaves .1% of all germs behind?! Impossible! That still leaves hundreds of millions of germs. The probability of just _one_ of those germs infiltrating my body and multiplying is huge! If it's true then it's a conspiracy of the soap companies making soap that never completely cleans you to make people continue to buy soap forever!" said King before he received a swift hit to the back of the head popping him out of Tōshirō's gigai in the gikongai form as he rolled on the floor of the roof.

"On second thought, why don't you guys go clean the gigai after all," strained Tōshirō with a scowl formed completely out of individual pulsing veins.

"Oh captain, I just _knew _you'd see it our way. He was starting to sound like Orihime at the end there," joked Rangiku before picking up King and running off over-dramatically with Momone who was carrying the now empty gigai.

Orihime looked over at the mention of her name in confusion, and then went back to work on Rukia, holding her one hand out to the shield kneeling down on her knees.

"Hey! Hey! I wasn't finished talking yet! YOU BETTER GET STARTED ON THE REPORT MATSUMOTO!"

From far down the stairs, Rangiku and Momone's retreating voices could still be heard.

"What was that Momone? I couldn't hear what he said," whined Rangiku in a mocking tone.

"I didn't hear him either, not even with this sensory enhanced gigai Rangiku-sama. Tell him to save yelling across long distances for when his voice finishes dropping an octave in about thirty years, besh. Right now his yelling voice just sounds like a screaming cat trying to strangle itself," said Momone massaging her temples as if to prove her point.

"Ugh speaking of strangling cats, Haineko made me so mad the other day! Here's the scoop on what happened…," Rangiku continued until she was out of earshot luckily for Tōshirō's sanity.

At that point he saw Ichigo and Renji touch down on the roof at the same time before instantly flashing over to Rukia.

"Abarai, Kurosaki," affirmed Tōshirō flashing over to them crossing his arms. He was standing at Rukia's feet, while Renji and Ichigo were crouching at her right side next to the kneeling Orihime. A pained expression was on Rukia's face before it morphed into a calmer sort of expression, but still pained. Her gigai however was sitting at Rukia's head with her palms clasped together. Rukia's gikon inside that gigai had a childish look of worry, something not usual on Rukia's own face.

Rukia neared four-fifths completion. For some reason it was taking a little longer than Tōshirō's healing had for the same amount of time, but the rate of healing speed was increasing every second. She also hadn't finished healing Tōshirō, and the injuries were different anyway. Orihime had sweat dripping from her face as she watched Rukia. It pained her to see her usually bold and confident friend so prone and vulnerable.

She looked over at Ichigo. He and Renji had come in and not said a word. They only crouched next to Rukia, looking at her and waiting for her to wake up.

_"Kurosaki-kun seems alright after fighting one of the people Momone-san said was an 'espada'. It's no surprise that he's more worried about others than himself," _said Orihime looking at the expression on his face he made looking at Rukia.

_"It's another one of Kurosaki-kun's looks. No. That's not it. That's not the same pure guilt-ridden look he gave me after I got hurt. Where he wasn't looking at me, but looking at his failure. His weakness. No. That's a different look in his eyes, its uncontrollable worry, concern, care, and sadness…Passion. There are so many emotions in those eyes that I still can't tell…," _thought Orihime as she looked away, a sad expression crossing her face.

_"No. Why am I still having these feelings? It's only natural for one to care for a friend if they get hurt. It's not like he didn't care for me as well. Even if he didn't and only felt guilt, it shouldn't matter to me at all," _she thought closing her eyes.

After these thoughts, Orihime finished up Rukia's healing in one final discharge of reiatsu after about two more minutes much to her gigai's delight as the shield was dispelled. She noticed that Tōshirō had disappeared. _"Probably to check on whatever he was upset with before with Rangiku-san and Momone-san," _she thought.

"W-wukia-samaaa~a Pyooon!" sobbed the gigai hugging the small shinigami making her open eyes.

"I-It's alright Chappy," said Rukia as she sat up and examined her arms and legs. She felt the spot where she was sure a hand had pierced her just a short while ago.  
>All the extra noise had caught Renji's attention who had been looking away for the moment.<p>

"Huh? You're already healed?" he asked in surprise.

"Yeah…It healed so fast as well!" exclaimed Rukia referring to her wound among Chappy's cries of previous concern about her.

"Thanks, Inoue," said Rukia looking at Orihime. The girl had been looking away for the moment as well thinking about everything that had happened when Rukia's 'thanks' had snapped her out of it.

"Huh?" she asked.

"Your skills have improved so quickly," explained Rukia.

"Oh, hehehe, not really! I'm still learning, seriously," said an embarrassed Orihime putting her free hand up in denial, but her façade was interrupted.

"Are you healed, Rukia?" began Ichigo. He had gotten up during Rukia's last stretch of healing and was giving her another one of his looks. This one was different than earlier. This now was the same expression of guilt which both Rukia and Orihime recognized."

"What's with that face?" she asked, making an annoyed face in retaliation before getting straight to the point.

"Are you feeling guilty or something? I know that look. Don't tell me you feel responsible for my injuries?" she said. It was phrased more like an accusation than an actual question.

"If you do, then just get over it and get over yourself," she said before turning slightly away, crossing her arms, and closing her eyes.

"Look, my own injuries were my own fault, alright! I'm not so weak that I need you to protect me all the time. So stop making that pathetic face. It's worse than the one you made that I kicked you for in the classroom earlier today."

_"Kuchiki-san said the same thing I did, but in her own way I guess," _thought Orihime. She wanted to see if Rukia could stop Ichigo's guilt again.

"Yeah…fine," Ichigo said as he vaguely looked away, but Rukia wasn't buying it.

"If this is about the hollow inside you, why not ask Urahara about it? He is the one that trained you after all, so he has to know at least something," suggested Rukia.

_"Huh? Hollow inside of him?" _she thought for a long pause before remembering his fluctuating reiatsu during the fight with Yammy and Ulquiorra.

Ichigo looked as if he was thinking about it and then responded. "There's really no point in telling Urahara about this. Even without talking to him at all, it's obvious he knows about what's going on inside me. He seems to know a lot of things without my needing to tell him. If he knew of a solution, he would've told me before I went to Soul Society. At least that's what I believe. The fact that he didn't tell me proves he doesn't know how to stop it. I'm simply glad he was nice enough to train me. I don't want to bring this up, pretending he'll give me an answer only for him to not have one. He's done enough, so I don't want to go whining to him with more of my problems. It's pointless." explained Ichigo looking down. Renji, Chappy, Orihime, and Rukia were all looking at him and heard everything he said, listening in silence before he turned away.

"I'm going home Rukia…," he said trailing before going back into shikai mode and disappearing in a burst of shunpo.  
>"W-wait up Ichigo! Renji, Inoue, I'll see you later!" she said before going back into her body, getting Chappy and putting her into the gikongan dispenser and running down the stairs.<p>

_"I see. Kuchiki-san can help Kurosaki-kun deal with his problems, but in the end, even if she can help him, he still has to deal with them," _thought Orihime with new understanding of her previous thoughts that day.

"I guess I should head back to Urahara's now Inoue-san. I need to see how that girl Ururu is doing anyway. She got hurt during my fight," revealed Renji. Orihime took this in, her eyes widening at the thought of Ururu being hurt.

Thanks….for everything. No, wait, I'll take you down to your apartment with shunpo," offered Renji.

He did as he promised and soon left in a burst of shunpo.

Orihime stood in front of her surprisingly open door and walked inside.

She came inside to see Tōshirō and Rangiku sleeping on the couch. Both were in their gigais, in different sets of clothes for sleeping.

_"Ah they must've been exhausted. Now that I think about it, Rangiku-san did say how tired she was when she first came over here. They're sleeping on the couch…I never got to give them their rooms,"_ thought Orihime, as she finished cleaning up the ice cream. It looked like Tōshirō made an effort to eat some, but failed for some reason as he had some in front of him. She went up and healed both her sleeping guests with Sōten Kisshun. Not using the kotodama so to not wake them up. She then went into the bathroom. The bath looked like it had been used again, but they had cleaned up after themselves. Orihime came out and stretched as the clock struck **10:12 PM**. She looked around at the now clean apartment, and sat down in front of her memorial to her brother Sora and closed her eyes.

"Alright Sora. I've made up my mind. No matter what happens, I will get stronger. I'll do all I can, anything. I know I have these powers for a purpose and I will find it," she said remembering her speech to Momone earlier that night about how she wouldn't give up and would develop her powers. Her reiatsu gradually rose as she thought over how everybody said her healing powers increased so much. Then about how Momone said she should focus on healing.

"Shun'ō, Ayame! Sōten Kisshun! I reject," she chanted quietly as to not wake up her guests. The shield materialized around her as her bandages, sling and cast seemingly slowly repelled themselves off of her body and as if affected by her reiatsu. Slowly but surely, a metaphorical lightbulb slowly turned on in her head getting brighter and brighter, as she began to formulate the very beginning of what she would come to know as a brilliant idea.

* * *

><p><strong>Omake:<strong>

Momone and Rangiku had just ran inside at **9:55 PM**. With Tōshirō's gigai, they began to run the bathwater.

"This thing reeks, besh," complained Momone with a straight face.

"Yeah it needs a ton of bubble bath if you ask me," said Rangiku trying to find an excuse to use the wall of bathroom related accessories on Orihime's wall.

"Bubble bath huh?" questioned Momone.

In about 15.64 seconds, the tub was overflowing with a wide mixture of bubble solution.

"Uh, I think we put to muc-," began Momone before Rangiku interrupted.

"Nonsense! Toss captain's gigai into it. The dirt and grim will flow right off!" reasoned Rangiku.

Momone did as was told, throwing the gigai into the bubbling primordial looking cesspool that was Orihime's bathtub as it disappeared beneath the mass of bubbles.

"What do you morons think you're doing," said a strained voice at the door.

At hearing the familiar voice, Momone and Rangiku turned around unfazed in the least.

"Oh..it's you," they both said before turning back around only to both be hit in the back of the head by random bubble bath bottles.

"'Oh...it's you'? What's that reaction all about! More importantly, why are you trying to _drown_ my gigai! You didn't even take it's clothes off and you used like 5 bottles of bubble bath without even cutting the water off!" yelled Tōshirō observing his gigai's still unsunken hand raising in the air as if reaching out for a breath of air itself.

Rangiku sighed and Momone facepalmed, "No captain. _Three_ bottles of bubble bath. The other two are bath _salts_ obviously. You're just like King, not reading the labels on things," scolded Rangiku.

"Seriously, this kid," said Momone as if severely disappointed. This didn't do well for Tōshirō's blood pressure.

"Yeah, plus since you were being a prick about us washing the gigai, we decided to leave the clothes on and clean both at the same time. We even added some laundry detergent to the bath," quipped Momone with her finger up in the air as if she had added to the discussion, wearing her usual uninterested expression. She also now held up the now completely empty bottle of clothes detergent.

Sweatdropping was an understatement of what Tōshirō was doing as he took a step back. "Are you people purposely insane!"

Momone quickly countered with sarcasm. "No, we only accidently stumbled upon the glorious path of psychopathy, besh. Shut up and stop yelling kid, we're cleanin' your gigai. Men aren't supposed to be present for these types of things, besh."

"The heck I'm not! No _only_ is it male, but it's _my _gigai and it has clothes on. Not that it would even matter! Now that I'm here let me clean my own gigai!" yelled Tōshirō. At this point he was basically just one giant pulsing vein.

Then suddenly they realized during their arguments that the floor was being flooded.

"Aw man, now we have to clean this up before Orihime gets back," whined Rangiku.

"What kind of attitude is that? You two are the ones who caused it!"

Momone made the sound a buzzer going off indicating Tōshirō was incorrect. "Wrong! It's because you distracted us, that this happened. Plus the girl wont even care. Can't she just reject it or some crap like that?"

"Hmm. I don't think it really works that way Momone, that would be more in the kidō department. Her powers aren't really kidō," said Rangiku with a thoughtful look.

Tōshirō had stopped arguing at that point and looked on with aloof expression. "Are you two really having this discussion when the water is going INTO THE REST OF THE APARTMENT! Not to mention my gigai is probably filled with water and detergent by now! If I go into it I'll probably die or something! Inoue will be back any moment now! Is this how guests should be acting! This place looks like a disaster zone!

Once again, Momone and Rangiku showed no reaction to Tōshirō's raging rant, "Eh? Whatever, we'll think of something. Meanwhile let's continue with the disinfection/sterilization proces-," began Momone looking as if she were to do a major experiment as she was interrupted.

"TURN THE WATER OFF!"  
>=========================<p>

**Author's Note.  
>Chapter started: Saturday, <strong>**September ****03, ****2011, ****10:59:47 PM****  
>Chapter finished: Monday, September 05, 2011, 6:06:01 PM<br>Revisions: 0 AD-2050 AD...lol j/k, that is the time it took to do chapter 6. The time for revisions for this chapter took place during Sep 3rd-Sep 17th. October 1st.**

Hope you enjoyed the chapter. I am finally getting my groove back! Chapter four drained me because the angst and the canon slowing me down. Getting into this chapter I kind of just typed what I felt like starting with Rangiku and Orihime's ice cream party. I type much faster when I don't have to reference material as much. I can't wait to get out of the canon. This is why I had so much fun typing chapter one. Now to feel that way again in chapter five is a great feeling. Things will really pick up in the next two chapters. Stay tuned. This expository arc will be over very soon. Lol.

What's up with Chad? Stay tuned.

Momone is Rangiku's soul candy and ends her sentences with 'besh' for some reason. She is supposed to be perverted, but I suck at writing perverted characters so I cut it out. King is Hitsugaya's soul candy and Kubo forgot what he ends his sentences with, but I wanted to include these guys in the story. King is an idiot who talks about things like probability. Lol

Also, you probably wonder why Ichigo just left Rukia on the roof of the parking garage, when she usually travels on his back. Well, for one she had Chappy and her gigai to worry about, and when Ichigo went to fight Di-Roy, he didn't have her on his back then either.  
>Also, Orihime can heal herself as shown with how she healed herself when Grimmjow told her to "fix her face" after Loly and Menoly beat her up, and when she reappeared, her face was fine.<p>

**Notice**: There were 2 different hints to the future AU arc this chapter. One of them is obvious. I want you to try and guess the other. Also, next chapter is longest yet. This chapter was merely transition in the grand scheme of things. Wish I had more time writing the Omake. I would've been able to make it funnier. I wrote it like, five minutes, so it's really rushed.

To everyone that has read this story I thank you for taking the time out of your undoubtedly busy schedule to do so. Moreover, I want to especially thank my reviewers, **Codry, Lunacat13,** and **HokkaidoMaster** who also is a beta for this story. Honestly, without these guys, and if I hadn't gotten any reviews up to this point, I would have probably given up. Reviews are the lifeblood of a author. You have no idea how much they brighten up ones day when you check your story and more reviews are there. Please give me feedback. Review, rate, subscribe.(always wanted to say that.)  
><strong>Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.<strong>


	6. Blooming Hibiscus: Evergreen Camellia

UPDATED AT LAST and on the promised date if I may add. Author's Note at bottom as always. The Author's Note is REALLY important this time. I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. This chapter wraps up the expository arc that's been going on up till now. I think that's the reason this chapter is so long. I seriously considered splitting this chapter up, but all the action flows together so well. Splitting it, I feel would deter fluid comprehension of all the concepts I've put in here. It's a similar predicament that Quentin Tarantino faced in splitting up and releasing his movie Kill Bill into two separate parts. He eventually edited and merged it into one, re-releasing it in a form which audiences would interpret the way he originally intended. Next chapter starts pure AU content, and 2 chapters after that starts the main arc. More info on this chapter in the AN at the bottom. Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc. That is all.

* * *

><p>Blooming Hibiscus: Evergreen Camellia<p>

**September 9th**

**3:10 PM JST(Japan Standard Time) Classes have ended for the day**

"Hmm, Kurosaki-kun didn't come to school again today," said Orihime aloud, closing her eyes as she walked home.

"But if I concentrate really hard, I can feel his reiatsu so he must be alright," she said opening her eyes back up.

"Knowing Kurosaki-kun, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for him to be off training somewhere in secret so that nobody will bother him. If that's all he's doing, then I probably shouldn't go looking for him, but Kuchiki-san was really worried about him too."

"_Kurosaki-kun. Did you really leave without saying anything to at all to Kuchiki-san?"  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>September 8th<strong>

**3:34 PM Classes had ended for the day**

After the previous night, today had been a rather normal day. Orihime had healed her injuries last night, and removed all the bandages. Up to that point, she had kept the bandages and cast absentmindedly. With Tsubaki gone, and evrything else that was happening around her, she was sort of drowning in her own gloom. But last night after her talks with Rangiku and Momone, she had thrown away her gloom and psycological attachment to her injuries, and was determined once again, just like Ichigo.

Neither Chad, Rukia, Uryuu, nor Ichigo had come to school today.

"_Both Kurosaki-kun and Kuchiki-san didn't come today. Maybe they are resting. Did Sado-kun get hurt again during the battle last night?" _Orihime thought to herself before her name was called.

"INOUE!," shouted Rukia running towards Orihime with a serious look on her face.

"What's wrong Kuchiki-san?" asked Orihime to the panting girl.

"It's Ichigo! I've gone all over town and I can't find him anywhere. He's been gone since before everyone woke up this morning and his family is really worried. Especially his sisters and I can't sense his reiatsu anywhere," explained Rukia.

Orihime absorbed this information. "I was kind of worried when you and Kurosaki-kun didn't come to school. I knew whatever his reason was, was yours as well since there would be no reason for you to come without Kurosaki-kun, but you are saying he's gone off somewhere without telling you or even his family? He didn't even make up a story to tell them or anything like he usually does?" asked Orihime incredously.

"Yeah! I've been searching around town all day, even without being able to feel his reiatsu. I thought tracking his spiritual pressure of all pressures would be easy since it leaks everywhere, but it's practically gone. He must be masking it somehow, or extremely far away," finished Rukia.

"I'm going to keep looking. Be on the lookout as well please Inoue!" shouted Rukia running off.

"Alright Kuchiki-san!" yelled Orihime at Rukia's retreating form.

* * *

><p><strong>(Back to present, Sep 9th, 3:11 PM)<strong>

Orihime thought back on Rukia's worried persona yesterday. Her not coming to school today again, meant she still had not found Ichigo. Orihime thought how he wasn't the only person who had seemingly gone missing.

"_But, why would Kurosaki-kun not tell even Kuchiki-san?"_ thought Orihime, sadly remembering the look Ichigo gave Rukia while she was being healed after the fight with the arrancar, before snapping her head up in shock.

"Wha-!, What was that? That was so depressing! I'm being so gloomy again!" she said, running down the street, throwing her arms up in the air while still holding her bag.

"Ah-! But, it still gets lonely with Ishida-kun and Sado-kun taking time off from school as well. It's the weekend so threre's no school tomorrow! I know-I'll spend time with Tatsuki-chan and then we can have some amazing food like we always did-" said Orihime before stopping as she remembered how somber her friend had been the past couple of days.

"_Tatsuki-chan seemed really sad, but didn't want to show it. Maybe it's because of what happened to her with...that arrancar called Yammy...? No, Urahara-san and Yoruichi-san or the rest of the shinigami should have taken care of her just like the rest of the fallen bodies that day. She shouldn't even remember what happened and speaking of Ishida-kun and especially Sado-kun..." _she thought, trailing off_._

"Either way, Tatsuki-chan has been really down lately. Maybe I should go visit her instead?" said the girl looking down with a solemn gaze.

"Oh! Welcome home Orihime-chan!" Orihime turned back to address who had called her.

"Oh, hello Shinmura-san!" she said with a beaming smile to her amiable neighbor.

"By the way , Orihime-chan. I've been meaning to ask about those two people staying with you. Are you sure they're all right?" asked Shinmura.

"Huh?" asked Orihime looking up at her apartment window, the looking back down. "Sure why do you ask?"

"Well, it's not like I was _spying_, but I couldn't help but notice they carried something really strange into your room," explained Shinmura.**(A.N. she was totally spying)**

"Ah, um, ok I'll check it out I guess. See you later Shinmura-san!" shouted Orihime as she ran up to her apartment and opened the door. Various thoughts pulsed through her head. What could they have possibly brought into her apartment that was so strange to _even_ Shinmura? She went through her apartment and opened the door to her room.

What she saw answered her question in the bluntest way possible. "Woah," she said in awe, "That's really cool! No wait! It's not! What is that thing Tōshirō-kun!_?_" exclaimed Orihime referring to the gangantuan screen where she was pretty sure her bed used to be. It was an ethereal looking device that looked like it came straight from a biopunk/steampunk fusion genre story. It had cords that resembled arteries, veins, and capillaries, yet steam was clearly coming out of some of these 'valves'. Tōshirō and Rangiku were standing in front of the monstrosity.

Tōshirō mumbled something under his voice in annoyance before turning to address the screen as a worker from the 12th division appeared on screen who was caught off guard by the sudden connection.

"Sorry for the delay! This is the communication server for the Department of Research and Development. Rin Tsubokura speaking."

"This is the Captain of the 10th squad. Tōshirō Hitsugaya.

"Ah. Alright, I'll transfer you now. They've been expecting you," said Rin as the sreen went to static before refocusing on the visage of a familiar face. The Captain Commander, Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto. Otherwise known simply as Captain-Commander Yamamoto.

"Ca-captain-commander-san?" questioned Orihime with wide eyes.

"Thank you for taking care of this so quickly Captain Hitsugaya. To get straight to the point, this emergency channel was only established for one reason. We have discovered Sosuke Aizen's true objective!" announced Yamamoto through the screen.

The atmosphere in the small room transmutated into something that felt heavy, like spiritual pressure.

"What! Aizen's true objective!" asked an astounded the astounded 10th division captain. The Captain Commander's bluntness had caught even him off guard.

"Indeed," responded the commander swiftly.

Orihime found the atmosphere a little too smothering for comfort, along with feeling out of place. "Uh, you know what? It sounds like you guys are discussing important Shinigami stuff, so I'll just stay outside okay?" she said nervously smiling and turning around making to leave.

"Wait! Unfortunately the matter I'm about to discuss concerns you humans as well. You should hear what I am about to say," said Yamamaoto.

The 'atmospheric pressure' in the room solidified into a cloud that then came down and enveloped Orihime like a thick fog.

"Y-Yes sir." she responded before Yamamoto continued.

"It's been about one month since Sosuke Aizen vanished. Since then we've launched an extensive investigation. With teams scouring the Squad 5 captain's barracks where Aizen lived, along with the underground assembly hall of Central 46 the _'Seijoutoukyorin_' where he hid himself after his feigned death, and finally The Great Spirit Library. We were having a hard time since most of it is off limits and even among us captains, few comprehend the library's inner workings," began Yamamoto.

"You can skip the introductions Captain-Commander. On to the main problem," replied Tōshirō. He had thought the Commander would continue with his bluntness, but instead was giving the synopsis to what sounded like a bad novel...or anime plot.

Yamamoto looked at Tōshirō for a moment as if analyzing him before continuing, "As you wish. After countless hours of searching through the data, Captain Ukitake, who is in charge of the search of the library finally found something yesterday. Most records show Aizen looking up research-data related to the hougyoku, but only once, two days before his disappearance, we found that Aizen looked up a completely unrelated document," explained Yamamoto.

This intrigued Tōshirō to no end.

"So what was he looking up?" he asked, eyes shining with curiosity and wariness.

"Ōken. Otherwise known as The Royal Key," stated Yamamoto simply.

The atmosphere changed into the void. A place Orihime was familiar with herself. No more heaviness was present, but there was just emptiness as if Yamamoto's words had popped the balloon of building tension, yet the ruminations of the explosion rebounded off the walls. Vibrations could be felt in the void, just as before. The metaphoric fog that surrounded Orihime burst into liquid rainwater, drenching her in it. Confusion soaked Orihime as she witnessed the reactions of her guests.

"Wh-What is a 'royal key'?" she managed to get this question out.

Rangiku felt obliged to answer on that one. "It's exactly what it sounds like. The key to a royal house. You may not have known, but the Soul Society has a royal family. We even have a king, but he had placed Central 46 in charge of governing the Soul Society so it feels like he doesn't even exist. To be honest, neither I nor my captain have ever seen him in person."

"Correct," added Yamamoto. "Our king is called '_Reiō_' or 'Spirit King'. Not only is he revered, but he is an important symbolic figure with Soul Society. In essence, a figurehead, yet his existence is absolute. The 'Royal Palace' is located in a dimension completely separate from Soul Society and is guarded by its own force known as 'The Royal Guard'. The Ōken is the key that opens the path from our dimension to the one in which the Royal Palace resides.

"That means Aizen-san is going to use that key to..!," began Orihime.

"Kill the king," said Yamamoto finishing Orihime's sentence. "We must assume that is probably his true goal, but that's not the real '_problem'_," he continued talking with both hands on his cane.

Tōshirō did some mental gymnastics in his head at this even newer reveal, while preparing for the bigger one that was still yet to come _after_ asking what exactly the _'problem'_ was.

"The data or book Aizen found didn't reveal the location of the Ōken," said Tōshirō as if stating a conclusion, yet still sort of putting it out there to be either corrected, or affirmed.

"Exactly," confirmed the Captain Commander. The location of the Ōken is something that has been passed on verbally from one Captain-Commander to the next for successive generations. As such, there never has been nor shall there be a 'written record' whether it is as you said, 'books' or even documents. The data Aizen accessed, was apparently a reference from the era when the first Ōken as created. What he learned was the potentially _analogous_ method to creating another an Ōken itself," explained Yamamoto.

"So what you're saying is, the problem lies in this 'analogous' method then?" inquired Rangiku.

"No. Not with the method...Well specifically, the problem relatively lies with the 'materials'. In order to create an Ōken, you need one hundred thousand human souls and a plot of 'Juureichi' or in other words 'spiritually enriched land' with a radius that is one Spirit-Ri(里) or 'spirit-mile' for contemporary measurements. In human terms, that's 3.927 kilometers or 2.44 miles," calculated the ancient, but powerful commander.

Orihime didn't even take in those numbers as she was stuck on the _former detail._

"O-One hundred _**thousand**_ human souls!" stuttered the girl as if processing the information that had been input and outputting it as shaky words.

The confusion that had soaked her before, now was proving an even worse occurrence as the information she was processing materialized as a chill that played hop-scotch up the individual disks of her spine. It flew up as fast as an electric current going straight to her brain as she finished asking the question to Yamamoto. The confusion had transformed into a sort of abstract ominous premonition. Comprehending what Yamamoto had just told her would obviously shock her. One hundred thousand human souls? It was as if the sheer number of souls downplayed the importance and essence of each individual soul. The memories of all the souls being sucked into the air by Yammy played through her mind. She thought of all the unique kinds of people that attack had affected. She thought of the empty carcasses that littered the grasses that day and their subsequent disappearance thanks to the shinigami. It was as if they never existed in the first place. Their souls and bodies were gone forever and it seems the very memory of those people had somehow been erased from family and freinds as well. Never existing in the first place is the polar opposite of immortality.

Though this wasn't what caused the soaking confusion's transformation into the multiple premonitions. She didn't know why there was now an odd feeling in the back of her mind. It was similar to the feeling of 'fight or flight', or what one calls a 'sixth sense' for danger. Perhaps it was because of something the commander had said after his 'one hundred thousand souls' remark that the girl had picked up subconsciously while still being fixated on the _former detail_.

The room took on a new atmosphere. One of an extreme dry coldness, and it wasn't coming from Tōshirō. The coldness augmented the metaphorical feeling of being soaked in liquid, causing more chills to fly up Orihime's spine to her brain. The reason Yamamoto had told her _specifically _to stay and the suspense of what he was leading up to. Each chill represented a 'dot'. As each successive chill was absorbed into her mind, she began to 'connect the dots' with the little information she had before Yamamoto supplied her with more ammunitions, thus more connections as he continued talking. He had both seen and heard Orihime's reaction to what was only the beginning of his grand revelation.

"Correct, but these 'souls' are not the only matter of concern for you. 'Juureichi' indicates a singular point in the human world whose location changes with time. It is a name given to a spiritually heterogeneous land in the human world where spirits gather at an unusually high rate," Yamamoto continued.

He watched his audience's reactions as he continued talking, but Orihime's in particular since he was explaining most of this redundant information to her at the expense of the other two Shinigami.

"You must have figured it out by now," he said, addressing his viewers while preparing the final blow, "that the _Juureichi_ Aizen has his eyes on is none other than **Karakura Town**," he finished with finality.

If any of the three in the room hadn't figured it out before Yamamoto's big reveal, it was only Orihime showed visible shock while Rangiku and Tōshirō only continued to show the same stern and serious looks they had shown up to that moment. The dots connected and lit up in a perfect line within Orihime's mind, releasing the pent up potential-energy from the former pulse-like chills. They re-manifested as a cold sweat throughout Orihime's body post-'big reveal'.

In order to restrain his viewers from any unnecessary questions, Yamamoto proactively initiated an even more blunt re-affirmation of the information he had just fed to the three listening on the other end the screen.

"I can't think of any other place with one-hundred thousand souls, on a one Spirit-Ri(里) radius of Juureichi. It seems so surreal and difficult to grasp, so I'll put it in more concrete terms. If Aizen is able to complete an Ōken using the method in that reference, Karakura Town, the land on which it stands, and every person living there will be carved out of this realm and erased from existence!"

Yamamoto's re-emphasizing smacked Orihime like a wall of wind. The cold sweat became literal as it stoked her skin underneath her clothes. The girl began clenching her fists at her side, struggling to get out her emotions in the form of words. Her face was distorted in a mixture of fear and frustration.

"….W-We can't…," she began. Yamamoto focused on her wanting to hear what she had to say.

"…let that happen! Isn't there some way for us to stop him?" her eyelids grasped at each other, closing tight around her eyeballs, her firsts quivering with unfocused energy. Her head drooped toward the floor.

It was as if reality was mocking her emotions. Just earlier she had remembered all the souls that had lost their existence at the actions of Yammy, and now not only were one hundred thousand souls going to suffer a similar fate, but it was going to happen _again _right back in none other than Karakura Town. Last time it was their souls that had suffered the fate. The Shinigami only took care of the bodies for obvious reasons. Now it would be the souls, including their bodies, and the entire town itself. It was like reality had exponentially expanded her fear and threw it in her face.

Yamamoto's face was enigmatic and unreadable as he seemingly let Orihime drown in her emotions before answering.

"Even if there isn't, we will find or even create a way!" Orihime's eyes widened at this as her eyelids released their grasps of each other. "That is why the Gotei 13 is here!" said Yamamoto as Orihime looked back up in surprise, seeing Rangiku smiling softly at her. Tōshirō continued standing at attention to the screen. This conversation was not over just yet.

"According to a report from Kurotsuchi, the Hougyoku remains in a dormant state for a period of time after being released from its seal. There's nothing Aizen can do to change that. No matter what method he uses, it will take four full months for the Hougyoku to fully awaken. Until it does, Aizen cannot complete his troops for the type of massive task he has in mind, but once it does, he will make his move immediately. The decisive battle will be this winter!" declared Yamamoto slamming his staff down.

"Until then, we must hone our skills and prepare the best we can!"

"Yes sir!" said Rangiku and Tōshirō in unison.

"As for you Orihime Inoue," began the commander now fully focused on the girl. Orihime slightly jumped at the mention of her name. Her eyes widened a little.

"Since Aizen is after your world, it's possible situations will arise where even we cannot handle that massive of an area by ourselves. We will need the world of the living to gather its strength as well. So I have a task for you. I want you to please inform Ichigo Kuroaski on this matter." Orihime took in what the commander said. The atmosphere evaporated, her being no longer weighed down as a determined look spread across her face.

"Yes, sir!" she echoed Rangiku and Tōshirō as she ran out the room and eventually out of her apartment in search of Ichigo.

Unlike Rukia, she still had a good feel of Ichigo's reiatsu if she concentrated hard enough. She went in the direction she felt it. Sensing reiatsu in this way was vague. There was no straight path towards it. It is really hard to explain to a non-spiritually aware person or one that isn't good a tracing another's reiatsu back to the owner. Luckily, the town was relatively clear in the area of reiatsu at the moment. There weren't a lot of others that were expelling their energy into the air to throw off Orihime's senses. Ichigo's reiatsu anyway was easily distinguishable for her. In all, it was still a difficult task, like tracing a weak smoke back to its source by smell only. The closer she got, the more it "smelt". Eventually she got to a general area of town where he could be and narrowed down things to a specific area with her senses, common sense included, until an actual trail became decipherable to a group of abandoned warehouses.

She stood a ways back off to the side in front of one of the larger warehouses before finally concluding, "This must be it".

A cat walked by in the space between Orihime and the entrance to the warehouse. Most likely a stray or vagabond, but its actions didn't go unnoticed by Orihime, whose sensitivity at that point was turned up to full blast and nerves on end from her search.

"_The cat…it's walking by that wide area like there was a big hole in the ground next to it,"_ she observed as she looked around and up at the sky. _"Same for the birds and everything else,"_ she thought referencing birds flying in the air and sitting on a power line along with a line of ants.

"_They're all staying away. They can't get close because…,_" she thought walking up to where the cat had strayed, _"there's a barrier here," _she said. She went out and touched it with her right hand, causing now visible ripples and felt the reiatsu composition. Her eyes narrowed in observation.

"_It's so powerful, that it's not like the animals just can't past through, but that they don't even realize this building exists. Hmm. On second thought, it's similar to the really weak barrier that was around the hole the arrancar crashed into in Yumisawa, but just a little more complex so as to keep anything away from it..…Yes complex, but it feels very similar to my Shun Shun Rikka shields,"_ she thought as she pushed forward with her hand allowing some of her fingers to pas though and diffused through it almost as if nothing was there at all. It wasn't as if the barrier were very thick because as soon as her hand went through the feeling of diffusing through it stopped. Going through that barrier initially felt like moving ones hand through a body of water, but once past it, it went back to the normal feeling of moving through air. The ripples reverberated through the barrier at being partially penetrated.

"_I can do this!"_ thought Orihime as she continued putting her entire right hand through the barrier, then her forearm, and entire arm. After which she placed her left hand to the barrier and passed through on that side until her entire body followed.

"_Maybe the barrier wasn't that powerful after all? Is that really all there is to it?" _she thought looking back at the barrier before turning around._ "More importantly what is this place?"_ she thought looking back at the barrier. Her pondering was interrupted as reiatsu struck her prone form making her abruptly turn around to face the warehouse.

"This reiatsu! Its feels like a storm, ...and it's all coming from inside!" said a shocked Orihime holding her arms up towards the warehouse bracing against the initial impact before smirking. "Looks like I'm going to have to pull a Sado-kun here and run right towards the source," she said smiling while thinking about her friend.

"If the owners of the reiatsu are as strong as they feel, then they've sensed me by now, and I'm sure one of those reiatsus is Kurosaki-kun's!," she said running into the warehouse.

The interior was structurally decrepit, yet clean and orderly at the same time, as if regularly serviced. But she didn't concern herself with the niceties as she noticed a large light coming out from the floor in the middle of the warehouse as she ran towards it, coming up next to it.

_"Huh, it's like an opening to a basement?"_ she thought, but she knew she had to go down there after just standing next to it and feeling all the reiatsus being channeled out through that little space. Plus, it was already open.

"I might as well. Can't turn back now," she said as she took a step.

A path of mint condition stairs the contrasted with the rest of the warehouse descended down into the brightly lit abyss. There was concrete-like structure surrounding the stairs down to a certain point. She took more steps and could now clearly decipher two battling pressures after having adapted to the initial reiatsu storm. She could tell one of them was Ichigo, but wondered what the others were doing. She somehow managed to pick out a certain other person's presence as well. As she hastened her decent, she passed the point where the concrete surroundings stopped and saw a vast area of rocky terrain with a full artificial sky that extended throughout the room parallel to where the concrete walls around the top of the stairs ended. However, some portions of the sky were actually higher than that, meaning the part where the stair walls ended actually came down lower than the rest of the ceiling. On top of this, the 'sky' didn't look like a painted ceiling, but like the actual sky, so it threw off Orihime's depth perception a lot.

After taking a few more steps, she could see a party of seven looking up at her. The group's reiatsus didn't seem particularly malevolent. Well towards_ her_ anyway. They all looked very eccentric in their own way; however Orihime took note in the back of her mind that Shinji was among the seven.

"_So I sensed correctly after all," _she thought taking in the scene below her.

She could hear several exclamations at her apparent sudden appearance, and suddenly she felt it. One of her rare awkward moments was forming at that very moment, but she couldn't help it. She didn't know what to say and they were all staring at her, and talking among themselves too low so Orihime couldn't hear them. She had to say something, anything. Drops of sweat formed on the back of her head at seeing the group's collective reaction.

"Er..um," she began. The same slightly nervous yet highly amused smile forming as it usually did when things got awkward. She didn't know why the awkwardness amused her. Perhaps it was the extra adrenaline endorphins she got from being in pressured situations?

"Um, excuse me, but where's the bathroom…ehehe just kidding, " she said rubbing the back of her head nervously. It was one of her habits. All this did was cause more clamor and then chatter, mainly from a silver haired man, but again she couldn't exactly hear the conversations.

She was about resort to calling out to Shinji before a large explosion sounded to her right causing her hand to drop off her head in surprise. She looked over at the rising dust before a vaguely familiar voice sounded as well.

"What the heck are ya doin', Ichigo!" yelled Hiyori who was in the air with her mask half off to the side. Ichigo panted as he began to get up.

"Kurosaki-kun!" yelled Orihime.

"Inoue?" panted Ichigo in return, raising his head up to look at her.

"Baldy!" yelled Hiyori, joining the apparent name-calling game as she dug her sandal into Ichigo's head with a harsh kick.

"GAAH-K!" yelled Ichigo as he tumbled into the base of a spire before bursting out in a explosion of reiatsu with shunpo catching Hiyori off guard, a comical scowl on his face.

"I was in the middle of a conversation! Learn your manners snaggletooth!" he commanded, firing a pre-charged Getsuga Tenshou at point blank range, but it went right through empty air causing a _particularly destructive_ explosion on the ceiling nearby to the massive chagrins of Shinji, a man with longer curly blonde hair, another man with a star-shaped afro and sunglasses, and a large round man with cropped pink hair. Suddenly Hiyori was behind him swinging back her hand with a sandal in it preparing to attack.

"Snaggletooth? If you had all that time to come up with lame names, then you could have blasted me instead of coming up with some taunt only a baldy could possibly come up with!" exclaimed Hiyori.

However, Ichigo was one step ahead and caught her sandal. "How ironic, because it _sure_ took you a long time to swing that sandal between all that garbage that just came out your mouth!" he said raising his sword with his other hand to cut her, however she blocked with her free sandal before he could raise Zangetu's cutting edge. Her foot with her sandal was holding down the top of Zangetsu.

"I keep telling you to stop talking and start fighting you moron!" she said slipping her mask on with a nod and charging up a cero before being hit in the head with the blunt force or Shinji's head. The uncharged cero dissipated in a mild explosion in her face, cracking what was left of her mask from Shinji's sudden attack. He had flown parallel to the ground with his arms crossed and hit her dead on nonchalantly. It was uncharacteristic of Shinji to even playfully attack Hiyori at all, let alone unprovoked.

"Hey genius, we have company. Let them talk," he said standing right side-up from his previous position as he watched the recoiling girl's head go back.

Hiyori countered by lifting her foot off of Zangetsu, raising her leg up in the air and kicking down on Shinji straight in the nose in a axe-like motion with the heel of the sandal. She raised her head up with a victorious smug smirk.

"I thought I was going to miss, but it's impossible to miss your head since your teeth are such a big target! A blind person shooting in the opposite direction would still hit those things!" taunted the pigtailed girl.

"You're one to talk about teeth!" Shinji stated rather incredulously, holding his re-broken nose. It had only just healed up from the last time Hiyori broke it during their last conversation that involved Orihime. "Because if that's the case then!-" he continued before being cut off by the resounding onomatopoeia of wood smacking flesh.

"'We have company' my ass! First you let the girl follow you after school! Then you let her follow us here to the base!" she yelled, chastising the other blonde vaizard while combo-slapping him in the face before Shinji managed to dodge an oncoming attack.

"You idot! She obviously found the base on her own, by sensing for Ichigo!" he yelled continuing to dodge 'The Sandal Onslaught™'.

Ichigo took advantage of this spectacle, and shunpo'ed towards Orihime on the stairs. The remaining six individuals looked on in earnest wondering who exactly the human girl was and how she got inside.

"Inoue what are you doing here!" was the first thing to come out of Ichigo's mouth.

"Ehehe, that's my line Kurosaki-kun" the smalled chestnut brown haired girl countered with a variant of circular logic. A smile was on her face after saying this, but it slowly turned into a small frown.

"Everybody's worried about you."

Ichigo's gaze became slightly downcast at this while Orihime paid notice.

"_Guess I'm the distraction that's also the bearer of bad news huh?"_ she contemplated in her mind before her expression turned into a smile as she had an idea before turning into a comical mocking scowl.

"This is the part where you say 'It's alright Inoue. In the long run I'm doing all of this _for_ them so I can protect them in the first place' or something like that," she said in her best 'Kurosaki-kun impression'. "While at the same time you mostly just want to get stronger for yourself right?" she asked with her bubbly smile.

At this, Ichigo's eyes widened. Orihime usually seemed oblivious to things, but for her to read him so easily, it was almost like the time she had re-affirmed his decision to go to Soul Societ and save Rukia.

"I-Inoue-," he said, but was cut off.

"But, that's not what I came here for Kurosaki-kun. What I have to tell you will probably make you believe in that mindset even more.

"Wha-huh? What are you talking about Inoue? What do you have to tell me?" asked Ichigo channeling the sheer curiosity of a toddler.

A smile broke out on Orihime's face at Ichigo's redundant questions before she began running down the rest of the stairs.

"Wha- wait Inoue!" Ichigo yelled after her.

"Let's talk about it down there!" she said pointing to a spot not far from in between where he had been training with Hiyori and where the remaining six people were still standing. As she got near the bottom of the stairs she hopped off the edge, falling a ways to the bottom so as to avoid any unnecessary questions that would arise by going straight down towards them. Ichigo followed suit as she went to the appointed location.

She sat down on her knees next to a lone rock formation that had been luckily spared by the training. Ichigo came and sat in front of her with his side facing her front, while still turning towards her.

"So what's this all about Inoue?" he asked wide-eyed, now a clearly perplexed looked etched into his doe-like expression.

Orihime prepared herself for the long explanation and wondered how she would best paraphrase it, knowing Ichigo has a short attention span and would probably interrupt her with questions. She had to decide the best way to explain it.

"Um, this is a lot so please listen carefully alright?" she explained. Ichigo nodded in response.

"Earlier today, Rangiku and Tōshirō set up a screen in my house to talk with the Captain Commander. He said how they had found out Aizen-san's true objective by tracing back data he had reaserched. It was about something called 'The Ōken' or 'King's Key'."

"Aizen huh? So his true objective is this key?" interrupted Ichigo, obliviously confirming Orihime's former aprehensions.

"Yes. I thought this was strange when I first heard it too, but the Soul Society has a king and royal family that live in another dimension guarded by a 'Royal Guard'. The Ōken creates a path to that dimension, and Aizen most likely will want to create an Ōken of his own to kill the king since not even he knows where the original one is, but that's not the problem.

"That's _not_ the problem?" asked with a sort of disbelieving look on his face.

"No Kurosaki-kun, the problem is with the way the key will be created," further explained Orihime, a grave expression appearing on her face not going unnoticed by Ichigo. He soon sported a supplementary curious look.

"To create the key, you need to basically sacrifice an area classified as a 'Juureichi' or 'Spiritually Enriched Land' by Soul Society. There is only one of these and it changes location over time. It is a place where the most powerful souls of the human world tend to gather. Along with a juureichi, a minimum of one hundred thousand human souls are required as well, and uh well, it just so happens that the juureichi also has to be at least a radius of one Spirit-Ri(里). That's uh… 3.927 kilometers I think, but I forgot how many miles it is. But anyway, the main reason I'm telling you this is that well…Karakura Town basically fits every one of those descriptions," she said rather candidly.

Ichigo's eyes widened slightly at this, but shock wasn't really evident on his face in the least.

"So yes, Karakura Town is the current 'Juureichi' of the entire world, and Aizen-san is most likely planning to destroy it and everyone in it to create the key and go to dimension where the king lives and kill him," finished Orihime all in one breath. She took in Ichigo's expression as she began talking again.

She inhaled to finish off the explanation in one final breath, "But he can't do this for four months, because the Hougyoku hasn't fully awakened yet. Without that, he can't create an army of arrancars strong enough to fight Soul Society, so the Captain-Commander told me to tell all of us to train hard until the final battle begins in winter."

A long pause was heard, and a blank expression visible on Ichigo's face.

"I see," he finally said, closing his eyes.

"'_I see?' That's all he had to say after me telling a seemingly crazy story like that? Not to mention he was calm throughout the entire story. He's not worried at all? Is it confidence?"_ thought Orihime as her eyes went over Ichigo's expression.

"Hmm? What's with that look Inoue?" his asked with a innocent expression.

"I was just thinking how you're not surprised by any of this at all," she said with a reassuring smile.

"Oh. Well, I'm really surprised more than you can imagine. It's just…how do I put it? When you say stuff like 'Ōken' and 'Royal Guard', my mind can't fully grasp it. I don't exactly know how to react. It hasn't really sunken in yet I guess," explained Ichigo.

"_Ah, so it was surprising, just so overwhelming that his mind hasn't absorbed it all yet,"_ thought Orihime picturing a literal 'ocean' of information surrounding Ichigo's brain which was a strawberry colored sponge, but it was already filled up to capacity at the moment and couldn't take all the water in at once. Quickly she snapped herself out of falling into the depths of her imagination.

Ichigo looked at Orihime before standing up. "Don't look so worried Orihime. I'll be the one to stop Aizen. I promise," he said shooting her his own reassuring smile.

"_I guess that answered my question. Not only is he not worried, but he actually is confident after all. So why was I so worried about this?"_

"I know I can still get stronger. I can feel it now," he said holding up his hand and clenching into a fist it as he looked at it.

He then looked back at Orihime sitting on her knees still with her hands in her lap. "I appreciate you giving me the heads-up and keeping me posted Inoue. Thanks a lot," he said before walking away towards Hiyori who had _"settled"_ her argument with Shinji and was kneeling down.

"Alright Hiyori! Let's get back to training!" he said sounding as if he were actually enthused about potentially getting roundhouse kicked with more sandals.

"It's Hiyori-san to you baldy!"

"Whatever," he replied.

"That's 'Whatever-san' to you as well baldy! You have to learn to respect your teacher," she said returning the 'talking ball' to Ichigo.

"'Whatever-san?' So lame. It doesn't even make sens-" he began before being punched by a newly masked Hiyori.

"I thought I told you earlier ta' stop talkin'! It distracts you from battle," she yelled.

Ichigo donned his mask and retaliated in a burst of speed.

"And, I thought I told you that's my line! Be original for once!" he shouted with a fury of sword swipes from Zangetsu which he had at some point unbeknownst to Hiyori, picked up.

"What! You liar! I'm the one who started that! Learn some freakin' copyright laws dickhead!" screamed a Hiyori renewed with rage as a vein pulsed on her forehead, but all Ichigo did was slice her sandals off.

"Learn some new vocabulary! How's that?" he asked with a smug smirk behind his mask until it cracked and broke. Hiyori reciprocated his now vanished smirk except more anger was present in her expression after losing her sandals.

The ensuing commotion and subsequent explosions were drowned out and eventually muted by Orihime's inner thoughts.

"_Ichigo. He can't really process what I told him, because he's so busy training to get stronger. It doesn't matter what anybody is planning. He is only concerned with how strong he is and what he has to do to get stronger. From leaving everybody and training alone, to even trying to control this 'inner hollow' of his that he and Kuchiki-san were talking about. I have to admit, seeing the mask just now scared me, but I had already seen Hiyori's mask so it didn't catch me off guard as much. Either way, nothing is able to distract him from being focused on his training. He truly is becoming stronger, and he doesn't feel dark and scary anymore. Not even when he had the mask on. Yet he still doesn't feel like his old self. I guess Kurosaki-kun really has changed. It's to be expected I guess from somebody like him. Yet' I'm still in awe. He took what was a massive problem for him, that I didn't even know about and now is using that same problem to make him so much stronger."_

Orihime was now standing up continuing her thoughts as she ran towards the stairs past the group that was still huddled near there. She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn't hear the renewed exclamations from the silver-haired man.

_"Here I've been since getting back from Soul Society, saying how I wanted to get stronger. I had ideas, but I was trying those ideas out as if I had all the time in the world. That's not training. That's like leisure time. I wasn't worried or actually training with any sense of urgency. Despite that, I got a little bit more control of my powers from that. Then, Tsubaki was destroyed and since then I've been moping around like Momone-san said, complaining about everything. Though after that second fight with the arrancars I know now what I have to do. But after seeing Kurosaki-kun doing all this, it makes me want to get started on that idea I had back then much quicker. Before I begin that plan though, I need to go to my training area with the rest of the Rikka. I haven't trained since Tsubaki has been gone and I need to make sure I am in proper sync with them or see if anything will go wrong because he's not here. This is the only way to get stronger and get Tsubaki back. I get it. I must get stronger too!"_

She finished her thoughts as she ran out of the warehouse. She forgot to take the time to look around the interior like she wanted to, but on second thought she didn't really want to snoop somebody else's house anyway.

Running down the street away from the warehouse district, she was surprised when none other than Yoruichi Shihōin abruptly landed in her path.

"There you are Inoue."

"Yoruichi-san!" exclaimed Orihime in surprise. Orihime _still_ in the back of her mind couldn't get over Yoruichi not actually being a cat, and actually being female at that.

"I've been looking for you for some time now because Kisuke asked me to find you."

"Urahara-san did?" questioned Orihime.

"Yeah. Seems he wants me to bring you to the underground training room right away," said Yoruichi stepping forward.

"Uh..oh ok, I guess that means right now, so let's go I gues-" she began , but was cut off by a flash behind her before noticing the Yoruichi in front of her was gone.

"By right, away, that means not only 'right now', but, as fast as possible. We'll be using shunpo or course," she said with a cat-like grin at the end of the last sentence.

Before Orihime could even care to comment, the world became a blur. It slowed down at certain points that Orihime guessed was touching ground, but even at these points it was a blur. After these points, the blur only increased in vagueness as they got faster. It was strange that she didn't feel any pressure from going so fast. In no time at all they were at their destination, Urahara Shoten.

* * *

><p><strong>5:16 PM<strong>

The day was getting duller as the sun began to approach the horizon preparing for sunset at around 6' oclock. Orihime and Yoruichi had landed in front of the store and began to walk towards the entrance together.

"That was so fast Yoruichi-san! I've never been carried during shunpo before, let alone at that speed!" she said praising the Shihōin princess.

"Huh? That wasn't really that fast. I went slowly so as not to overwhelm your human body, but I guess it was fast to you for the reason you said," said the woman in an impassive tone.

Before Orihime could respond, Urahara came out of the store entrance to greet them.

"Ahh Yoruichi-san, Inoue-san! What brings both of you lovely ladies to such a humble little shop as mine with all this other competition," said Urahara with his usual goofy visage, eying the giant convenience store down the road while waving his fan back in forth.

"Not, now Kisuke. You know I live here, and secondly, you know you sent me to get Inoue," stated an unamused Yoruichi.

"Oh~, somebody is grumpy todaaay," said Urahara before his visage became serious. "Okay then, let's go inside and sit down," he said walking inside and leading them to a room with a small Japanese style table. It was the kind that you had to sit at in criss-cross style. Renji was sweeping the room with Jinta. He was wearing a frilly pink apron, which was much to his dismay as Orihime could tell. Suddenly he was hit on the head with the top of a broom.

"Hey, Pineapple-moocher, use the proper 'Utimate Sweeping Technique'. Your form is all sloppy!" yelled Jinta while twirling the broom he used to hit Renji in his hand.

Renji's face became as red as his hair at the 'pineapple' quip. It was like his version of Ikkaku's being called 'bald'.

"I could say the same about you, you little slacker! You make Ururu-chan do all the work even though she is still recovering from her fight, and _your_ hair is like an overgrown onion! Plus, there's no technique or form, it's just sweeping! And you're not even doing _that_! You're just kicking up dust-" he began, but both of them had large burly hands clasped over their mouths.

"Tenchou came in here for some peace and quiet. 'First rule of the shop: Respect the guests'. As for you Jinta-dono, you should know this first hand. **Don't you see we have a guest?**" he said with an ominous glint appearing in his glasses.

Jinta blanched out at this and stopped thrashing, as did Renji who figured there was no point in arguing with a person that was currently his boss.

"Ah Abarai-kun, don't work _too _hard now. Conserve some energy for the really hard jobs like cleaning Yoruichi-san's litter box," said Urahara waving his fan at Renji. Luckily Yoruichi wasn't in the room to hear, though Urahara still had a bad feeling about saying that just now. His visage once again loss it's goofiness as he addressed Orihime.

"Now, then have a seat Inoue-san," he said placing the table in front of her. However Orihime continued standing.

"Urahara-san, um what is it you wanted to talk to me about?" asked Orihime.

A slight pause was heard before he responded, "A short while ago Matsumoto-san of the tenth squad came by here," he began before turning completely towards her.

"You already know all about the King's Key, correct? It was so sudden that I hadn't been expecting it, but both we and Soul Society have to focus on the upcoming battle this winter regardless. It's going to be what's known as 'absolute war'. There will most likely be more bloodshed than ever before. So with that in mind, both we and Soul Society will need more offensive power than ever before in return.

"Yeah, I'll do anything to protect everyone and Karakura Town as well. I want to get stronger!" said a fired up Orihime.

The shadows claimed Urahara's expressions as another pause occurred before he began talking again, "Is that so? Well in that case I will say this; I want you to stay out of the battle this time around.

The mood changed as everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up at Orihime and Urahara. Orihime couldn't comprehend what the shopkeeper had just said.

"H-huh...?"

"In your skirmish with the arrancar on the 3rd, six days ago, Tsubaki was destroyed right? Since then you haven't been able to restore him?

Orihime wondered when exactly she had given Urahara the name of any of her Rikka, and realized Yoruichi must have told him.

"No, I haven't. He was smashed into such tiny pieces, that I couldn't even find a surviving piece of him. I thought since he was defeated, that I would at least find a broken piece of his hair pin or something, but not even that. I don't know how to even fix him. There's nobody to help me unlike if I were a Shinigami. _Or even if I had something like an inner hollow," _she thought the last part inside her head, thinking about Ichigo_. "Even that type of person could get help. Which is why there's only one person I can think of that can even remotely help me get stronger and figure out how to get Tsubaki back now," _thought Orihime once again reminding herself of her idea_._

"Using Koten Zashun with Tsubaki was your only means of attacking. Without him, I can't allow you to partake in the battle. It's only natural."

"_This argument again!" _thought Orihime.

She had already discussed with Momone about whether healing, defending or pure offense was most needed in battle. She had already come to the conclusion that all are needed just as much as the other. She had promised Sora that she would find her place and purpose. That she would get stronger across the board no matter what she had to do. That she would above all, get Tsubaki back. With Urahara throwing her only remaining insecurity back in her face, it fueled the normally weak anger that was within her.

"That's not being fair. Koten Zashun is not my only ability Urahara-san. I have two other just as important abilities as well. How can you ignore me, when I'm asking for your support in my getting stronger!" she reasoned, but she wasn't done there. She closed her eyes as an upset frown appeared on her face.

"I've been helping since we went to Soul Society. I had a purpose then, and I know I have one now. It's why you yourself told Sado-kun and I about everything that was going on with Kurosaki-kun back then right? You believed in the both of us to be strong. Why the change? Only because of our first contact with the arrancar?" she asked looking at the shop keeper with a distressed expression. From anger, spawned spite and it seeped into her mind, corrupting the next words she said.

"You gladly take me off the battlefield now when I'm ready to actually be of help for once. But you could hardly wait to throw the 'even more inexperienced me' into the middle of Soul Society, with the thought of rescuing Kuchiki-san, when it was really all about your Houg….yoku….ah wait, I'm sorry Urahara-san...Y-You already apologized about that and we understood your true purpose. I…shouldn't have brought it up," she apologized looking off to the side with a downcast gaze, feeling guilty about bringing up his only insecurity as well.

She knew the shop keeper hadn't really wanted Rukia to be killed. He instead, wanted to kill two birds with one stone by getting them to rescue Rukia and thus the Hougyoku while keeping it out of Aizen's hands. He explained as much and even deeply apologized when they had returned from Soul Society.

Urahara looked back up after Orihime's rant. Before her apology, you could both hear a pen drop and cut the tension with some low quality safety scissors. However, the tension was still there as everybody had been caught off guard by Orihime's sudden retort and was looking on to see what Urahara would say next.

His hat cast a larger than usual shadow over his face before he began speaking again.

"It's alright Inoue-san, but," he said looking so his eyes were visible, "I'm still completely serious about this. Saying, 'You're a part of the group, and fought hard in Soul Society, so that it's wrong to deny you the same privilege again especially when you are trying to get stronger'? Is that not an emotional argument? Especially coming from one who is now handicapped. Do you want to be killed? Don't you understand the powers we are up against?"

At this, Orihime channeled the thoughts and words of Momone, and Chad, "You say handicapped, but it's not all about offense. Like I said, I have powers just as important as offensive powers in the form of protecting and healing! Of course I don't want to get killed! It's why I _will_ get stronger!"

Urahara had his own comebacks ready as he twisted his hat.

"Santen Kesshun. A formidable attack if we're talking weaker to normal hollows. Once the enemies reach certain strength they are easily able to destroy the shield. The scope of its defensive capabilities are also limited in general. A standard Bakudo spell called '#39, Enkosen' can rival the strength of Santen Kesshun if cast by even a low level Shinigami. It can definitely surpass Santen Kesshun if only an adequate enough Shinigami were to use the Bakudo as well. That ability of yours also takes an entire three of your Rikka, while the Bakudo spell merely requires a shinigami to cast the spell. They don't even have to use incantation if they are skilled enough and still have the zanpakutō available. It's much more efficient this way. Not to mention that the enemy already has intel on your attack specifically. It won't be useful in the upcoming battles especially against beings like the arrancar. Now let me finish before you say something like 'That's why I'm going to get stronger Urahara-san!'.

As for healing, your 'Sōten Kisshun' , unlike your defensive capabilities, it truly is on a higher tier than any kidō whether you have realized it yet or not. However, it is also unnecessary in the upcoming battles. The fourth division will take care of all casualties, just as they always have since the beginning of the Gotei 13 for hundreds of years. It is no different this time around. People of both Captain Unohana, and Vice-Captain Kotetsu's calibers will be on the front lines with us as well. Not only are you not a 'front-liner' normally even with Tsubaki, but these fourth squad members will fill in any small hole you have managed to create during your very short time working with the Soul Society. In fact, it might not even exist in the first place, and if it does, it will as I said, be filled with shinigami with far superior and well-rounded abilities. They will compensate many times over," explained Urahara with the tactical ability of an expert in general analysis.

"B-Bu-," began Inoue trying to say something not even she knew what.

"No more. Please Inoue-san. You're making this harder than it is. Listen to the point I'm making. It's very blunt, but something you need to hear in order to understand. A warrior that can't fight is only going to be in the way. They'll hold everyone else back. They'll be a liability to the safety of others, and I can't allow that. You said earlier that you 'will' get stronger and are upset because you felt I was so strongly against the idea. You're wrong. You can get stronger all you want, but don't plan on using the life or death battlefield as your personal practice field. We only have a couple months till the final battle, and there will undoubtedly be skirmishes in between that date if the first two attacks are anything to go by. That's why there isn't enough time. That's just the way it is. Just continue whatever other self-training you were doing. I can feel your reiatsu has risen since returning from Soul Society, so it's obviously working just fine."

"You're asking…no telling…..no ordering me to be content in my current state Urahara-san," said Orihime in almost a whisper-like voice. Her eyes were wide and sad staring at the ground.

"If that's the way you see it, I can't change your interpretation. I did say continue your training after all, just don't get involved in the conflict with Aizen and the arrancars any longer," reasoned Urahara tilting his hat over his eyes making them un-viewable once again.

Renji had been listening the entire time like everybody else in the room. Throughout the conversation, he had a fluctuation of emotions, but had come to a conclusion.

"Inoue, he's right you know," he stated looking at her from across the room as he began walking over to her.

"While Squad Four does specialize in healing, they are still a Gotei 13 squad that has undergone battle training. You do have some very unique abilities. Not just for a human, but in general. But that still leaves the fact that before you got them you were just a normal human with no type of physical or psychological training for a battlefield. Let alone a battlefield involving beings with spiritual powers. This isn't your typical human battles or wars we're talking about here. Not to mention that on top of the 'only being a human', at least somebody like Sado has the right mindset for battle, but you just don't. It's not in you. You shouldn't try to force yourself into this out of some obligation of being with everybody else, or having to help and having some place and purpose like you said before. Please, it's for your own all-around good. This may have been the best time to tell you anyways," said Renji putting his hand on Orihime's shoulder. He looked at her with a sincere, heartfelt expression.

"Fine. Fine then," she said in a semi-whisper as a sad fake smile appeared on her face. She backed away with a shadow covering her face. "And thank you very much Urahara-san and Abarai-kun, for being so honest with me. I'm glad you told me all of this," she said raising her voice to a more audible level as she turned around with her back then facing everyone else in the room.

"Good bye!" she yelled with her back turned, running past the open doorframe. She continued to run towards the exit to go back outside the shop when she slid open the door and saw none other than Rukia standing outside in the now cool night air. The shinigami's expression immediately turned from an initial surprised to a perplexed, concerned look at seeing the state of Orihime.

"Inoue, what's wrong? You look so-," she began, but before she could finish she was interrupted by restrained tears finally welling up in Orihime's eyes.

"Ku-kuchiki-san," she stuttered as she began crying.

"Huh? H-Hey what's wrong, Inoue? Inoue!" yelled Rukia at seeing her sobbing friend. "Come, on let's go somewhere else," she said grabbing Oihime's hand, leading her away from the shop. Since she came out of the shop, it seemed something in there had upset her, so going away from it would make it easier to talk about things. They went to the giant convenience store that Urahara had been eyeing earlier and went up to it's roof.

"Now what's this all about Inoue?" asked Rukia sitting to the right of Orihime. Orihime sat to her left, sitting in a position with her knees up off the ground so that she'd have to hold her arms around them.

If it wasn't Rangiku who Orihime felt she could voice all of her feelings to, it was Rukia. She just felt she had a special connection with the shinigami. Normally above all it would be Tatsuki, but the girl wasn't even involved in everything that was going on and Orihime didn't want her involved for her own safety. Sort of like how Urahara and Renji were trying to get her to stay out of it. After realizing that massive irony, she wondered how Tatsuki felt before remembering the she shouldn't have even remembered a thing so the precedents weren't the same after all.

_"So then why has she been so sad lately?" _thought Orihime before she began looking at Rukia who was in turn looking at her in earnest waiting for her response.

Orihime looked away and then out over the edge of the roof with its protective railing and began talking. She talked in such a way that she didn't really understand what she was saying herself. It just all came out. 'All' as in everything she had been going through. Including everything she had wanted to tell Rangiku right before the arrancar attack before transitioning to the the conversation with Urahara and Renji. She hoped she had somehow managed to not talk about her talk with Ichigo as to not reveal his location, but she wasn't sure if she'd managed. Her mind was moving faster than her mouth, and her words struggled to keep up. She might have slurred some words in the process along with talking at an incredibly rapid speed before her it transformed into a something like a rambling rant. She finished, and it seemed she had said everything all in one breath, forgetting to breath during her explanation. All the while, not realizing she had been tearing up the entire time so that might have effected her speech as well. When she finished, she wiped her fledgling tears, looking back at Rukia who's expression was unreadable.

She hadn't shown any sign of confusion at Orihime's answer, so Orihime figured she had understood everything she said. A scowl formed on Rukia's face as she looked out over the railing.

"Tch. Are you kidding me? Not just Urahara, but Renji too? Unforgivable. Both of them! For them to gang up on you like that. Both of them will pay dearly, and you can bet Renji will get it the worst!"

Orihime meekly smilled at Rukia's reaction.

_"Being here like this I realize, Kuchiki-san can be just like Tatsuki-chan sometimes, but she still has her own little quirks that make her different," _thought Orihime.

"Uh, Kuchiki-san, they didn't really gang up on me. They weren't mean about it, they were sincere really. Plus I've calmed down about it since I talked to you. It's okay. I think it's better this way. After all, it's true that as I am right now, I don't have enough power to help us win against-" she began, but was abruptly grabbed by Rukia, cutting her off. She was slightly pulled up out of her stationary position as Rukia tugged on the sweater vest of her uniform while simultaneously speaking.

"IT'S NOT OKAY! Haven't you fought by our side all along up until now? You volunteered of your own will to go to Soul Society knowing you could've died. Ichigo even told me that even though you knew he would chose to find a way to rescue me anyway, your words to him back then made it that much easier for him to make the decision. It gave him confidence."

"Kurosaki-kun told you about that?" asked Orihime, her face lighting up in surprise.

"Yeah, we talked alot back when everyone was recovering after Aizen's betrayal. Not just him though. Everyone was kind of more curious about me than they usually are about me being a 'Kuchiki'. Since I was one of the main people involved in the incident I guess," said Rukia looking off to the side, "but that's besides the point Inoue. You've been with us this entire time! Aren't you frustrated that you're being cast aside like nothing? If you quit now, won't you just regret throwing it all away!"

Rukia's words struck home in Orihime's mind. "No, I'm not frustrated. I don't regret anything," said Orihime looking up at Rukia who quickly answered back.

"Don't lie!" she admonished.

"No, I mean it! I don't feel anything like regret and I don't believe I'll feel that in the future and I'm not frustrated either! It's just...It's just that if anything, I feel lonely because I won't be able to fight with anyone else," she admitted while remembering her conversation with Momone about how being on the sidelines, unable to help is the hardest thing of all.

_"Being on the sidelines is hard? Even though I said that back then, Momone-san tried to assure me that instead of complaining that I couldn't fight, I should find my place for that battle which was healing everybody. That was then, but now I don't even have a place. Now I really am on the sidelines. How am I supposed to ignore the upcoming battle when it will most likely involve all of Karakura Town?_

Rukia released her grip on Orihime's shirt as she fell back to the ground lightly, while on her knees. They were spread out below her as Orihime continued talking. The conversation with Momone was ripe in her memory as it seeped into her words.

"But, what would make me feel worse than simply being lonely is being in the way. Being in the way is much worse than not being involved at all. Having to be lonely would be much better than having that feeling come back," she said looking up at Rukia thinking about how in the past she had fueled Ichigo's guilt, keeping him from advancing.

Rukia looked back at her with a sad expression before it turned into a consoling one as she knelt down eye-level in front of Orihime.

"Listen Inoue, because this is very important," said Rukia. They both locked eyes, staring right at one another before Rukia knew she had Orihime's full attention as she continued talking.

"In a battle, the ones who 'get in the way' aren't the ones who lack power, but the ones who lack resolve," she said before sighing.

"Resolve. It can be described as the will to continue on. To fight for a purpose no matter what. Unbreakable and determination that is unable to be swayed," explained Rukia.

At this, Orihime remembered how Ichigo didn't let the news of Aizen's plans distract or discourage him. In fact, it had encouraged him to train harder.

Rukia continued, "So, you see, it is not power, but resolve. You can't really separate the two anyway as resolve is the source of power in most cases. Most battles are a test of mental and psycological strength more so than pure physcial power in the first place. The body _is_ a the _mind's _puppet after all. You have resolve Inoue. Your problem is that it is too weak. From what you told me a couple of minutes ago, you regained confidence and resolve during and after the second fight with the arrancar. Then you go and talk to Urahara, and he and Renji just completely transform your mindset with a couple of smart sounding explanations? You just give up and accept it? Urahara's word isn't the 'word of God' you know. Are you really going to accept everything he says? From what I heard from Vice-Captain Matsumoto earlier today, the Captain Commander said he need '_all _of the _human world_ to gather it's strength'. That includes you in case you were wondering," said Rukia with a caring smirk.

"What I'm trying to say Inoue is, in order to have a strong resolve, you can't be content one moment, and then allow the next thing to drag you down. Whatever comes your way, you have to deal with it no matter what! So, something makes you sad? Who cares? Take the corrosive negativity out your brain, throw it on the ground and stomp on it like the worthless trash it is! You know what it is and what it's doing to your mind, but you keep it in there, slowly corrupting you. Why? What is the point of doing that? What good does dwelling on these things do for us? When the shadows drag you down into their domain of darkness, then claw your way out back into the light. If these mental demons damn you down so far that you can no longer see the light at the end, let the light shine out from within you and illuminate the entire hellish _void_ itself! Harden your resolve and use it to get through anything that might get you upset. More importantly, don't forget to not be afraid to let other's shoulder your burden with you. They are there extending their hand to pull you out of the abyss! They want to help you. There are things you can't take alone by yourself! This goes for life in general and battles as well Inoue!"

Rukia was passionate in saying these things. Orihime was still looking straight in her eyes with her own wide eyes. They say the eyes are the pathway to the soul. That you can 'see' a individual's true self through their tell-tale reflection. If that was the case, then Orihime could see Rukia's very soul quiver like a flame through her eyes with each word that came out her mouth. At that moment, her fiery soul expelled out through her very being; from her eyes, to the zeal of her heated expression. Orihime could see with every word Rukia said, that it not only came from experience, but from her heart. Yet Rukia had only set up her foundation for what was going to be her main point to Orihime that night.

"Taking what I just said, let's look at things for a moment. Say you are determined in a fight, and get beaten as you did against the first arrancar. Even losing something important to you, as you did. This is where you use that resolve to get stronger and reclaim that Rikka back into your being!"

"But, Kuchiki-san that's been my goal from the start! To get stronger and get Tsubaki back. I've never had any other goal in mind! I even have a specific idea on both how to get stronger and get Tsubaki back!" said Orihime getting passionate herself.

"It's like I said, you have the resolve, but it's too weak! You let every little thing waver you. You're like a leaf in the wind Inoue! You let Urahara and Renji discourage you after you had just gotten your resolve back! What do you say to them!" asked Rukia riling Orihime up.

At this provocation Orihime stood up making a fist.

"I have nothing to say to them. What they said matters nothing to me! All it's done is make me want to prove them wrong. Even though I know they were just looking out for me, I'll work so that they reconsider what they think of me entirely. I'll do what I said I'll do two nights ago. And by doing it, I'll get stronger and get Tsubaki back, no matter what I have to do. Even if that means fighting against the arrancar and Aizen in the final battle against their wishes! Who cares if Urahara-san says there's not enough time! That just means I have to train that much harder. No more whining! No more complaining! No more excuses!."

"_That's what you're doing after all Kurosaki-kun. Not letting anything stand in your way. The shadows dragged you down, but you easily illuminated the dark void all by using the help and avice of others like Kuchiki-san and Hirako-kun instead of continuing to drowning in despair."_

Orihime sat back down in her previous position as Rukia smiled proudly at her.

"That's right Inoue, and if you get beaten in a fight?"

"Don't worry about it and just get stronger, not just till I can beat them, but to continue to improve so I can beat any other opponent! And also to know whether it is required of me to directly fight at all in the first place. I can have multiple uses on the battlefield," said the newly enthused girl.

"Wow, Inoue, you caught on really quick! I don't even have to ask any more questions after that answer. I just have one more point to make," she said with her expression going from surprised to docile.

"During the conflict in Soul Society and any other time both before and after that, nobody has been a 'burden' to anyone else. Not Ichigo, not Sado, not Ishida or anyone else, but especially not you Inoue," said Rukia wiping away a vestigal tear off of Orihime's face. "If any one of you hadn't been around back in Soul Society, I wouldn't be alive right now. Think about that. But, it's not just Soul Society. Even back in Spring before you got your powers, you helped out, by single-handedly stopping your brother when he was a hollow. I'm not sure if you remember since I erased your memory, but even though you got injured, it showed incredible resolve all the way back then. Now fast forward to the first fight with the arrancar. You were down because you got injured, but remember, they came looking for Ichigo. Who knows what else they might have done to try to find him or draw him out if you and Sado hadn't shown up. They could have killed even more people and Arisawa would have definitely died as well. Finally, after the second fight with the arrancar, you healed everybody that came to you. Urahara brags about 4th squad, but was 4th squad here at the time? They won't be there for _every _casualty in the final battle as well as Captain Commander said himself. It's why he said he needs the support of the human world. You have to think he knew there would be possible casualties fighting the arrancar. He sent us all here, knowing you were here, and you saved both Captain Hitsugaya, and me. We all can't rely on Urahara and Tessai every time we get hurt, and your healing far exceeds that of any standard fourth squad member. It might even surpass Captain Unohana in terms of general use. Imagine what you could do once you refine it through proper training?" asked Rukia.

"Kuchiki-san...," said Orihime, _"you're so amazing,"_she thought the last part.

The memories of stopping her brother Sora flooded into her mind. It seemed so far back, but it was really only a little over three months ago. At first she didn't really remember what happened, but over time her developing spiritual powers brought the memory back. When she first remembered it she felt like it was a dream, but then came to realize it as true after learning about the memory modification that shinigami use. Memories of all the other instances Rukia mentioned flooded her mind as well.

"You've done something every time you are involved that changed the outcome of the battle. For such a decisive battle as this upcoming one, there must be something you can to make a difference with _any _of your abilities. Especially when we need all the help we can get. Let's find that 'something' together Inoue. Come to Soul Society with me for some train-" she began, but was cut off by a explosion to both her and Orihime's side causing her to let out an audible reaction.

Orihime had seen something come from the air out of the side of her eye, and it had landed with extreme force, before she recognized who it was. The trademark red and white jumpsuit and 'dirty-blonde' hair.

"Hi-Hiyori-chan?" she questioned in surprise before Hiyori grabbed her sweater-vest similar to how Rukia had earlier.

"You're comin' with me. Hachi has some business with ya'," she said briefly.

"Huh? Who's Hacchi-san?" she managed to ask before Hiyori rocketed into the air not answering her question.

Orihime had already been carried at high speed by shunpo, but Hiyori was dragging her from only her sweater-vest through the air with only high speed, but not shunpo. All Orihime could do was yell from the treatment, before she could see they had arrived at the familiar warehouse, and in a burst of speed, they went down the same stairs and then to the left of them, where she was unceremoniously dumped on the ground.

"Owww," she complained rubbing her backside with Hiyori standing next to her.

"Hey Hachi, this is the one you wanted right?" she asked with her hands on her hips.

"Inoue!" said Ichigo from on top of a nearby rock.

"Alright now Ichigo. Break's over," said Hiyori looking up at him to the right.

"Huh? Hang on a second, whats Inoue doin-" he said before being slapped with a sandal by Hiyori sending him flying into another rock formation, creating a mini-impact crater as he fell down to the ground.

"I said the break time was over didn't I?" asked Hiyori looking down at Ichigo with disdain from where he was was just standing at.

"Why, you little! Alright that's it!," he said jumping up to swing Zangetsu at Hiyori who parried.

Orihime was still in a daze looking at the two, before a large shadow moved over her as she looked up and saw a large sort of round-shaped man in a green suit with cropped pink hair. It looked like it had a design on top, but she couldn't tell from her low position. He was looking down at her as if studying her before he began speaking.

"Hachi is just a nick name. My real name is Hachigen Ushōda. Nice to meet you," he said politely.

"Uh, hehe, n-nice to meet you too," said Orihime nervously. Hachi was so large that he was imposing.

At this, Hachi sat down causing a mini shockwave making Orihime bounce a little and he put his hand under his chin.

"Hmm. Mmm-Hmmm," he said looking at her as if intrigued. This didn't do well for Orihime's nerves.

"Um...so, what was it that you wanted to see me about?" she asked before Hachi reached out his large hand and twisteD her head to the side so that the right side of her head was facing him.

"Ah, wait a minute! What are you doing? Please stop it! You're going to pull my head right off like that!," yelled the frantic girl as she flailed her arms in the air. Hachi however was unfazed as he continued studying her.

"Ah. It's as I thought. These hairpins are the real source of your power. They're almost like _Zanpakutō, _yet different somehow…How interesting and rare as well! But this one is chipped," he said referencing the empty slot left by Tsubaki.

"I've been quite curious about it ever since you came here earlier to speak with our new friend over there," he said referencing Ichigo who was currently fighting on par with Hiyori.

"Yeah…That's right. I haven't been able to fix the hairpin or bring him back since he was crushed to pieces," explained Orihime.

Hachi took note of the words 'him', and 'he'. The right hairpin seemed to be chipped in two different places to him. This only fueled his curiosity.

"Well, would you like me to heal 'him' for you?"

Orihime was floored at this suggestion. She hadn't been expecting it in the least till all she could say was, "R-Really?"

"Why of course," said the pink-haired man sincerely with a smile.

"Wow! Thank you so much!," shouted Orihime. She couldn't remember the last time she had been so excited. To get Tsubaki back so much quicker than expected? Things just kept getting better.

"Oh it's nothing really, not a problem, hohohoho," chortled Hachi.

"Alright now let's think about letting go of her head Hachi," said the same silver haired man with a left eye-brow piercing from behind. He began walking over to the rest of the group who were a short distance away minding their own business. Ichigo and Hiyori however, were sparring in a different section of the room and were being watched by Shinji.

"First, you need to place your hairpin of the ground, so I can analyze its reiatsu structure to determine the method to best heal it. I still find it quite novel that inorganic, atomic, physical structures like these hairpins can actually exude spiritual pressure as if they were made of spiritrons or reishi. Normally I wouldn't even need to analyze, it, but with these circumstances I have to make sure," explained Hachi.

Orihime silently did as was told, placing her broken hairpin that also housed Hinagiku and Lily on the ground. Hachi's demeanour was simply curiously nonchalant, but Orihime interpreted it as a "serious doctor" act who was performing a life or death operation so she was quite nervous and anxious. Hearing Hachi say he had to 'analyze' her hairpins didn't help her state at all.

"Ah, here we go," said Hachi, erecting a rectangular prism-esque barrier. "I'll do two things at once by analyzing it with my barrier. This way I can evaluate anything within the barrier while healing simultaneously in real-time," explained Hachi as the barrier solidified, emitting a yellow glow.

Orihime could hardly believe this was happening. She was too excited to even analyze what exactly Hachi was doing to restore Tsubaki where she had failed.

"I'm so happy! With Tsubaki back, now I don't even have to go against Urahara-san's wishes if I choose to fight. Not that it would have mattered anyway," said Orihime, eyes brimming with determination and glee.

Hachi twitched at the mention of the shop keeper's name.

"Oh, so you were restricted from fighting simply because this part of your power was destroyed?"

"Uh, there's a little more to it than that. It was because it was felt that I wasn't necessarily needed in the upcoming battle, and with what happened with me losing part of my power, it only emphasized the point for them," said Orihime trying to explain herself.

"Hmm, so because they felt you they already had the required strength for this 'battle', when you then lost your ability they saw it as an incentive to remove any 'weak links'?" asked Hachi, making conversation as the barrier began exhuming reiatsu. Orihime could tell, most of it was being kept within the barrier as she finally began paying attention to what exactly Hachi was doing to restore Tsubaki.

"Uh…it's not like that. It's not that they don't need all the power they could get. It's just that somebody named Urahara-san, who is sort of in charge of all of us; he felt that I would be a liability in the upcoming battle. I think he just used me losing Tsubaki as an excuse though. So yes, an incentive like you said I guess," tried Orihime trying to further explain to no avail. The more Hachi heard the more curious he became.

_"Urahara huh? And this 'Tsubaki'?" _he thought.

"So how exactly did you lose this 'Tsubaki'? I assume it's what you referred to earlier as 'him and 'he'?" inquired Hachi.

"Yes, I was fighting beings knows as arrancars. Urahara-san told me that they were hollows, or 'fallen souls' who removed the masks they have to get shinigami powers. They even have their own Zanpakutō, so they are like hybrids. Though the one I fought didn't even need it to beat me. He had killed a lot of people, and I made a stand to protect my friends Sado-kun and Tatsuki-chan and hold him and another arrancar who he came with off. So I shot Tsubaki at the first one with my Koten Zashun technique and he got crushed into little pieces," explained Orihime with a crestfallen expression at raking up those memories. Yet she also had a look of anticipation as particles began to form around Tsubaki's hairpin slot.

_"So, Tsubaki is the name of the 'piece' I am restoring, and isn't the name of a technique, but instead this 'Koten Zashun' is instead. What exactly am I restoring here?" _though Hachi in his head.

"I see. It all comes together now. You said earlier that since he was so damaged, you couldn't restore him and that's the reason you were removed from the 'team'. Correct?" asked Hachi turning to look at Orihime.

Orihime sweatdropped at the redundancy of the conversation. "Uh, it's still a little bit more complex than that, but since I already tried explaining it like five times, let's just leave it at that," suggested Orihime. Hachi acquiesced at this request.

"However, I still find it strange," began Hachi, "since just by feeling and looking at your reiatsu, I can tell you have very similar abilities to mine."

Orihime processed what Hachi was saying as she took noticed of the increased activity within the barrier. The free-floating particles began to combine into bigger bonds as those bonds in turn coalesced into the area around the missing spot of the hairpin.

"With that in mind, you should be able to restore 'Tsubaki' to his original form even though his 'body' was completely destroyed," finished Hachi as the bonds continued to coalesce and began glowing as they combined to form the two missing pieces of the hairpin on the ground.

Instantly, the glowing hairpin piece sort of exploded in a poof as Tsubaki appeared in its place sitting down on top of the hairpin.

Orihime looked on mouth agape at the scene as Tsubaki 'poofed' into existence. It was very unlike how the Rikka normally appeared in a fluctuating pulse of bright light. He plopped on the ground and rubbed his head as he straightened up from his sitting position before looking up at Orihime behind him, taking in her expression.

"Huh? What is it, woman? What's with that dumb look?" said Tsubaki before being nostalgically snatched up in Orihime's hands before he could realize anything as she stood up hugging him to her face.

"Yay! This is great. No this is amazing! Tsubaki-kun! You did it Hachi-san! Thanks so much!" she shouted in elated mirth.

"Hey woman, stop yelling right in my ear! What's your problem? Let me go!" he shouted in protest pushing against Orihime's face with his bird-like feet while pulling at her mouth, stretching her cheeks.

Hachi looked on at the scene with a pure observational look.

_"Tsubaki huh? How perculiar. It isn't unlike a zanpakut__ō __in that it sort of has a separate consciousness from its owner, yet it is even more separate than a zanpakutō somehow. From the two pieces that materialized, he came. That must means there are five more where he came from if that's how her hairpins work. He is supposed to be for offense, since losing him was the reason Orihime-san was taken out of the action. So do the other five each have five other unique abilities as well besides offense? Offense is such a broad term, that I can't think of five other abilities for battle. Could it be that any other different 'entities' like him take up different amount of pieces on the hairpins depending on the 'broadness' of their ability? He could be a special case with taking up two pieces and there could be eleven more from the rest of the individual pieces for all I know. That's if the other pieces even create entities like him in the first place and instead create something different. Or maybe the right hairpin is for offensive techniques, and the left for defensive ones. This Tsubaki's technique would then be the 'Koten Zashun' she mentioned. Very interesting to think about indeed,"__ observed Hachi as he continued watching Orihime and Tsubaki's ensuing banter._

"Orihime-san, I've healed Tsubaki-kun, so technically going by the underlying circumstances, you should be able to return to whatever your former position was in battles. However, with that being said, I'm not particularly encouraging you to fight at all. I have to agree with Urahara-san."

Orihime looked up at Hachi with Tsubaki in her hands wondering what exactly made him think this way. Her wondering about Hachi's mindset was purely curious compared to her anger and confusion at Urahara's. Maybe because Hachi was just saying he didn't recommend her to fight instead of like Urahara telling her what she was and was not going to do. Either way, Orihime wanted to hear what her makeshift savior had to say. She also took in that Hachi talked familiarly of Urahara just then.

"With your abilities being so similar to mine, it's definite that you aren't suited to battle. This is especially true if you were to go up against opponents like the arrancars. In spite of all this, do you still wish to fight?"

By this point, Orihime had the responses to the type of questions Hachi were asking down to a refined science.

"Hachi-san…," she began. "You said how my powers were similar to a zanpakutō, but weren't. Then you said how my powers were similar to yours. With that, the same concept occurs. They are similar, but not the same, in the same way my 'hairpins' are not anything like a zanpakutō in my opinion. They are completely different, and because they come from my soul, I know I have the ability to fight. To heal and defend; all of that is needed in a fight. If somebody brings up the 'offense' argument, then I could say I know I have the ability to be offensive since that's why Tsubaki exists in the first place. Offense is then part of my soul. I am fully capable. You also say your powers aren't suited to fighting, when I know that's not true. You needed to go as far as analyze my hairpins to understand my reiatsu instead of just sensing it like you normally would as you said earlier. But, just with me standing next to you, I can feel your power. I don't need to analyze to know you can easily defeat strong level opponents. Not to mention all of your reiatsus," she said referring to the rest of the group in the training room.

Hachi was listening on with an about face.

_"Healing, and defending?" _he thought as Orihime continued talking.

"They all feel like Kurosaki-kun's. That's why you all are able to help him, because you all must have 'inner hollows' as well right?" said Orihime connecting the dots as she talked.

"If that's true, then you all must be shinigami with inner hollows. How are you not suited for fighting if all shinigami have zanpakutō? Isn't it a weapon meant for combat? Even though not all zanpakutōs are the same, they all still have abilities that would be useful in different aspects of battle. I think you might have meant we're not suited for 'direct' sword-to-sword 'melee' combat if that's the case right?"

Hachi smiled and nodded. "I guess you could think of it like that. If you want to fight then that's perfectly fine. I just wanted to hear what kind of response you would say. If you want to fight, then you just have to get stronger. You haven't yet mastered your powers, so surely there is a means for you to fight. You above all else should understand the potential you have to grow, since they are your powers after all.

Orihime smiled at the man's understanding reasoning, "Umm…hehe…yeah I know I can grow and develop my powers. It's what I planned to do in order to learn how to get Tsubaki back since I didn't really know how to in the first place. I had tried everything," she said looking at Tsubaki who had taking up a perching position on her shoulder. His eyes were closed as if in thought.

"But that's my point. I didn't exactly know what to do, but during the past two nights, I've made a plan that can get me on the path I feel is best. So I plan to do 'that' plan and simply train as hard as I can to improve my basic techniques to begin with," explained Orihime as if reciting the ideas that had been rolling in her mind for days now. Those ideas had finally come together, the night of the second arrancar battle to form the current 'big picture' she had in mind.

"Now that I have Tsubaki back earlier than expected, the plan will work that much faster, but I just need one more thing before I can begin," said Orihime with a quizzical expression as she looked off into space. She had remembered the plan earlier back when she was walking from school, after leaving after telling Ichigo the news and during her conversation with Urahara.

Hachi listened to Orihime's vague details about her 'plan'.

"Yeah let's hope this 'plan' of yours is better than that previous 'stuff' you called training woman," said Tsubaki with a huff.

"Oh, so you know about it already?" asked Orihime with a wide-eyed expression.

"Of course I know. How could I not? Don't ask stupid questions," said Tsubaki with a scowl.

"What are you talking about? There's no such thing as stupid questions!" retorted Orihime with a pout.

She had been caught off guard by Tsubaki's seriousness. Ironically, it was usually when he got mad and loud when Orihime didn't take him seriously, yet right now he was being rather calm. She wasn't angry, just in one of her occasional playful bantering moods. A similar mood she got into whenever she bantered with herself over the various things her overactive imagination managed to cook up.

"If that's the case then, there are stupid statements instead, like what you just said," said Tsubaki. He was getting thoroughly annoyed with Orihime's questions.

"If you know about the plan somehow already, then you should know about why I want to know how you know as well! Don't selectively read my mind for whatever suits you!"

"Now your babbling isn't making sense woman. What the heck is this 'read your mind' garbage? You don't need to know how I know or things like 'How does Tsubaki know even though he's gone for a while or 'Has he been aware of what's been going on this whole time?'. All you need to know is that I'm back, and learn to use me better woman!" shouted Tsubaki before a knowing smile appeared on Orihime's face.

"What's with that look?" Tsubaki asked for the second time today, but was caught off guard only for the first time.

"Yeah, what was I thinking trying to get you to explain anything?" rhetorically questioned Orihime. "You never were the type to explain anything. Even back when I first awakened everyone, you said about the same thing. 'You don't need to worry about who we are or where we came from! You just need to shut up and learn how to use us right now woman'," said Orihime doing her best Tsubaki impression. It was better than her Ichigo impression anyway.

"What the-? Was that supposed to be me you were acting as just now?" asked Tsubaki sweat dropping.

"Now you're acting like Hinagiku," smugly answered Orihime.

"WHAT DID YOU-" he began before he was snatched from behind by Orihime's hands. She pulled his bandana cloth from behind him to stop him from talking.

"But yeah, I shouldn't have asked you anything Tsubaki-kun. What I should have done in the first place was…" she said as she let Tsubaki go and raised her hands up.

Tsubaki turned white as a sheet from this motion. "No! Don't do it woman! I'll make you pay for it if you do!"

"I didn't hear a please in there anywhere Tsubaki-kuuuuun," said Orihime in a sing-song voice while smiling, raising her hands to the appointed position.

"DON'T DO I-," he yelled before he was cut off, fear in his eyes as it was too late.

"Shunō, Ayame, Baigon, Hinagiku, Lily!" she shouted.

Flashing pulses appeared from the right hairpin Orihime had put back in her hair earlier, along with the left hairpin as the Rikka appeared out of the light and immediately did a team 'glomp' on Tsubaki.

"Gaargah!" yelled Tsubaki as he was tackled out of the air and fell onto the ground.

"TSUBAKI!" the Rikka all yelled in around the same time.

"Get off of me you freaks! " yelled an enraged Tsubaki among all the Rikka's respective cries of joy. There was Ayame's hugging into his chest, as she shed her tears; while Lily showed a similar action. Meanwhile Hinagiku, Baigon and Shunō were simply embracing him.

Orihime turned to Hachi as the Rikka instantly began bantering after their reunion. "I could tell you were curious about my powers, so there they all are. Along with Tsubaki for offense, I can perform a healing technique with Shunō and Ayame, and a defensive technique with Baigon, Hinagiku, and Lily. All together, they are called the 'Shun Shun Rikka'. Each of them individually are called 'Rikka'. Hmm, now that I think about it, Rikka is a plural word as well," said Orihime with an amused expression.

Hachi showed a look of intrigued understanding.

"Hmm. This makes things a lot more clear. It's as I said, you can definitely find a way to fight, though with powers like yours. You will have to be extremely creative with these types of techniques to fight opponents like arrancars. It's fine though because, during our talk earlier, I felt the heat of a fire in you that drew me towards you. It's not often to see people with your level of determination and resolve. Even if it is newfound, I can tell it is unwavering. Your confidence right now is simply overpowering. Your demeanor and the way you've talked has changed as well. I could see although you were upset when Hiyori first brought you here, that there was a fire burning inside you. Then I told you I could, and began healing Tsubaki-kun, and the fire shown through. But now with all your Rikka out and Tsubaki healed, I can feel your reiatsu coming off in waves. If anything will happen to you it's that you'll get stronger, but I'm kind of upset," admitted Hachi, his head looking down_._

"Huh? Why Hachi-san?" asked the girl. She had been listening up to that point where she had then been thrown off by his abrupt change in words.

"It's not often than I see a person like you. Yes that much is true. But it's also rare that I find somebody with powers so close to mine. When I was just a Shinigami in the Sereitei, I was part of a military branch of Soul Society separate from the Gotei 13, known as Kidōshū or The Kidō Corps. At first becoming a shinigami, I was in the Gotei 13, but I was no good at zanjutsu which is basically swordmanship. I excelled instead Kidō which set me apart from any of the thirteen squads who at least required some basic zanjutsu skills. I could not really relate to anybody ability-wise until I was put in The Kido Corps, but even then I eventually rose in ranks until I couldn't relate to much other's in my squad in terms of power difference. Then I acquired a inner hollow through various circumstances and was able to create entirely unique Kidō because of it, like my custom 'Hachigyō Sōgai' barrier around the warehouse for example. Normal shinigami Kidō cannot break it, yet you, a normal human slipped through it without even destroying it.

This frightened all the others, including me, but it actually excited me deep down. I wanted to see what type of creature could do such a thing and then I found it was a normal human. Then I sent Hiyori-san after you, my interest no longer able to be contained. Both Ichigo and yourself; it is like our little family is getting bigger with finding people similar to outcasts like us. After meeting you and seeing how your powers were like mine and your determination, I felt a strong obligation to train you myself to help develop your powers and also train you in Kidō. You have a natural talent for the art. Everyone here with inner hollows, call ourselves 'Visored', meaning 'masked army'. To not know a single kidō spell, yet slip through a Visored created, anti-shinigami, existence repelling kidō barrier as only a human; and in a physical body at that! It's truly remarkable! You could greatly develop your base techniques and further augment your powers with learning kidō techniques. However you mentioned you had other plans to obtain strength so it disappointed me. It made sense that I would train you just as we are training Ichigo, who also has powers similar to us. That's all really," said Hachi ending his long explanation.

"You really think I could be good at kidō, Hachi-san? It seems that it's pretty complicated, but then again at the Shiba House in Soul Society, Kūkaku-san, told me I was so good at using the Reishūkaku ball and she had earlier explained how it was like kidō. I didn't really know what kidō was back then and I still kind of don't get it, but I'll learn if it makes me stronger,…Hey guys, get down here so you can listen to this!" she called up to her Rikka who were a distance away, up in the air flying around with what sounded like more arguments.

It seemed they were too engrossed in their conversation or just chose not to pay attention to Orihime.

"Of course you would be excellent in Kidō! Normally Shinigami learn a set of basic, multipurpose spells at the Shinō Academy. They are standardized, meant for general use and are variations of spells passed down from ancient times far predating the Gotei 13. Some of them were created specifically for the academy. However, most shinigami never excel in kidō in general since most emphasis is placed on zanjustu and mastering one's abilities with their zanpakutō which is reasonable. But, those advanced in kidō can learn both the lower and higher level spells, then enhance these spells into different variations. Then they combine them, customize them, or make entirely new spells with and without incantations. The possibilities are endless. I always say that the standardized kidō spells are bad for introducing kidō to newcomers as it stagnates creativity as standardized learning and testing often does in general.

My personal opinion is that the academy only creates generic manufactured shinigami in terms of kidō ability anyway. Those who transcend the manufacturing process are those who excel enough to be taken into the Kidō Corps where there are no numbered standardized spells. Custom, personalized spells are the norm there unless a certain protocol mission is being carried out. Some factions within the corps even had Kidō down to a science while others left kidō creation purely to the creative process. Other types of shinigami who get in are the ones who exceed in both kidō and have a zanpakutō that works well with kidō. In other word's a 'kidō-type'.

You are different than any shinigami however, being a human. You are a perfect match with natural kidō-like abilities, and perfect reiatsu control. You don't have to choose between zanjutsu and kidō. Your 'zanpakutō' so to speak, are the beings that reside in your hairpins, making you sort of like a 'kidō-type'. You are different though as you naturally have kidō abilities as if they are built into your very essence. This is even more true than taking up a argument saying 'a Shinigami with a kidō-type zanapakutō is naturally kidō gifted just because a zanpakutō is part of their soul as well.

If I taught you then I wouldn't teach you the standardized spells, but instead simply teach you basic ways to control the various aspects of kidō. Such as, how to mold your reiatsu into the various compositions shapes, and forms that take on kidō techniques and so on. Basic things, similar to the Reishūkaku ball you mentioned earlier and then further develop your own unique Kidō techniques from there. Though, since you have your own plans, maybe I will teach you a basic spell or two instead, to supplement your training. I guess I'm just that anxious to train you Orihime-san if that's alright with you, hohohoho," finished Hachi with his hearty laugh_._

Hachi had given a lot of information that was processing through Orihime's mind, and she was overwhelmed by the man's sincerity and pure kindheartedness.

"That sounds so great Hachi-san! Thank you so much for doing all this for me. I can't thank you enough!" she said, a happy blush appearing on her cheeks. "Plus, now that you mention it, I might have some specific things to ask you about after all," she said vaguely.

"Alright then!" said Hachi, who was beyond excited at finally having somebody to relate to and train.

"I know I suggested doing this even though you said you had other plans. Plus, I'm probably holding you up from getting to it, so I'll do this as quickly as possible while not ruining the quality of my teaching. Plus, with what I feel you are capable of, this should only take a couple of minutes once you get the fundamentals down. I'll also answer all your questions. So would you please call your Rikka down?"

* * *

><p><strong>9:16 P.M.<strong>

Orihime finished walking the long way up the steps to the main floor of the abandoned warehouse that based the Visored. What Hachi said as she left was repeated through her mind.

_"Even in this short time, you've exceeded all my expectations Orihime-san. But, as you go, take this book I talked about before, and remember this well, 'It doesn't matter what others say you should be. What's important is how you _want_ to be.'"_

She began to reflect on the Visored themselves while holding the aforethought book at her side. Had they been in Karakura all along or did they move from place to place? It didn't seem like it. They seemed pretty ingrained to the warehouse, as they had the whole underground training room. Although the significance of having such a thing seemed to have lowered since it seemed like everyone and their best friend had their own. So they might be nomadic after all. She remembered how Hachi spoke familiarly of Urahara. They apparently used to all live in Soul Society, so what happened and how did they gain hollow powers? Hachi had referred to them as outcasts. Were they outcast because of their powers and what did that mean for Ichigo? Orihime considered all this as she thought to herself, while the Rikka flying around her having their own conversations and arguments. She hadn't really managed to talk to any of the other Visored.

"You know, maybe I should get my own training room, though not as big," she said aloud with her finger on her mouth. "Though it would be weird since I live on the second floor, but having one would be better than having to go to the training area every time we train right guys?" she asked, addressing the Rikka.

Lily had Tsubaki in a headlock, and was repeatedly punching him in the head. He retaliated by biting Lily's arm (through his bandana), escaping and pulling Lily's goggles as they snapped back into her face only to be kicked at by Hinagiku, but dodging at the last second. He took the time he saved by dodging, to poke Hinagiku mid-kick in his free eye rather casually.

"You guys have gotten even softer while I was gone!," he shouted at his recoiling opponents. "Hey Baigon, let's team up and finish these guys off!"

Lily responded saying, "'Finish off'? You say that as if we're almost beaten or something! We haven't even warmed-up yet!"

Tsubaki was ready for a response and countered nonchalantly, "Exactly. I'm saying I don't even have to warm up to completely finish you off by myself. I'm just asking Baigon to help out so it's not overkill ony my part."

Shun'ō interrupted the fray, calling over to them "Um, you guys you might want to catch up. We're going out the barrier in case you're wondering," he said in a mocking tone. Baigon however was talking to Orihime about how to build an underground training room through the most practical way. The latter was soaking up what he said as if avidly taking notes with her eyes.

"Whatever. We'll catch up. Even though I was 'away', now that I'm back, I know everything that happened while I was gone. Not only can we go through that barrier, like the woman did before, but we can be separated anyway can't we?" asked Tsubaki with a grin which Shun'ō met with a mutual smile as his answer.

Lily gazed at the two before beginning to talk as if questioning what she was saying as she said it. "Yeah, I guess you would know everything that happened. We may all be separate personalities, but we are all part of each other as Shun Shun Rikka, and then with that, together we are also part of Orihime. It's sort of a separate, yet equal kind of thing."

"Did you really just suggest I was part of or even equal to Patchy over there? Just look at him, then look at me," said Tsubaki turning his back and flying towards Orihime who was right in front of the barrier with Shun'ō , Ayame, and Baigon.

"_Even after everything that happened that guy still has to ruin serious moments,"_ thought Lily with an annoyed look, flying up next to Tsubaki. Hinagiku followed suit with a smirk on his face as if he was amused that Tsubaki didn't want to be part of him.

Orihime immediately at will returned the rikka to their hairpins to the chagrin of Tsubaki who realized too late. she effortlessly stepped out of the barrier with her right leg. It was like walking through a giant bubble to her. She could barely feel it around her as she caused ripples in the barrier and finished stepping out completely into the night air before instantly sensing Rukia to her left. The girl had her arms crossed and was slightly turned towards Orihime's direction.

"Kuchiki-san?" she questioned turning her head.

At first she was just intrigued at sensing the petite shinigami right as she exited the barrier. Then, the gravity of the situation took it's toll and she became shocked and nervous as Rukia looked at her with a stony face.

"Uh-Um...You see this place is rea-" began Orihime waving her hands back and forth nervously.

"Don't say anything. I don't want to know" responded Rukia cutting her off.

"Huh?" said Orihime getting out the only thing she could out of her mouth at Rukia's response.

"I said don't care. Don't tell me," she said repeating herself, "I was just barely able to even feel a trace of Ichigo's reiatsu and it led me here. I thought I was going to have to learn reiraku(霊縛, _Spirit Threads_; "**Spirit Ribbons**" in the English dub) to even hope to find him, but I was lucky to not have to do that at all. Sensing your fresh reiatsu trail helped as well," she continued explaining.

"If Ichigo didn't feel the need to tell me where he was going, then it means he knows what he's doing. That's fine with me. As long as I know he's safe," finished Rukia. That last sentence she said was said quieter than the rest. The edges of her lips had moved up slightly as she showed a small smile. Orihime formed a smile as well after seeing this spectacle.

"_I can see she's so relieved. She's barely smiling and it seems like she doesn't care much, but this is just her way of expressing her emotions," _thought Orihime as she looked at Rukia who suddenly turned fully toward Orihime, her small smile widening.

"All right Inoue. Let's go!"

Orihime continued smiling as well before closing her eyes and responding. "Sorry Kuchiki-san, I'm going to have to sit out on this one."

Rukia's smile was replaced with a look of confusion. "Huh? But Inoue, if you come to Soul Society with me you can-"

"Kuchiki-san," interupted Orihime opening back up her eyes, "There's no need to go all the way to Soul Society with you. It's true I want to get stronger. These past couple of days have really brought that out in me much more than even before," explained Orihime. She thought back to her conversations with Urahara a few days back, who had said she had underestimated her own abilities. She thought with all the talks she had with both Momone, and Rangiku. Both fights with the arrancars flashed through her mind as well.

"I knew I wanted to get stronger, but it took me until I decided to heal my own injuries after the second battle, to actually begin to think about how to get stronger. It's like the injuries were holding my mind back. The approach I had been going with to get stronger was helpful, but not really the right way to go about things to prepare me quickly enough for fighting powerful people like arrancars," continued Orihime remembering Tsubaki's criticism of her training. Rukia looked at her friend listening to what she was saying.

"So, I guess I'm trying to say thanks for the offer, but I mentioned to you earlier that I already had something else in mind and to ask you to please trust me on this Kuchiki-san. Just like you trust and believe in Kurosaki-kun without even knowing what he is doing as well," said Orihime, saying the last part with a warmer smile.

"Besides," she began again before Rukia could begin talking. Her face took on a rare mischievous look. "Didn't you say you had something to finish with Abarai-kun? I've been thinking about what to tell you to do instead of training with me, and training with him would be much better. You two are good friends right, so you can use this time to bond with him and test your skills. Back when we were recovering in Soul Society, Yourichi-san told me he had completed his bankai training before Ichigo so compared to him, I'd just slow you down Kuchiki-san."

"'Slow you down'? There you go doubting yourself again," said Rukia uncrossing her arms before her expression turned a nostalgic one. "Yeah, Renji and I were best friends. In The Rukongai, wandering souls bond together and form families since they can't really find their previous family and in some cases like me, never knew them in the first place. Renji, I and other kids became like a family, having each other's backs and supporting one another. But district 78, Inuzuri or 'Howling Dog' was one of the most dangerous districts. Eventually only Renji and I were left alive," explained Rukia, her expression turning sour.

"Then he and I, both being able to feel hunger while in Soul Society meaning we had spiritual powers, decided we should together go to the Shinō Academy in the Sereitei to hone our powers and become Shinigami. That, and it was getting harder and harder to find food in Inuzuri. Nobody, but a bunch of punks lived their anyway," said Rukia, her ever-changing expression morphing into a scowl that almost rivaled Ichigo's classic look.

"So, going to the academy offered us a way out, and a way to move on from that life. Though as people do often when they go to school, they get split up and drift apart from their friends. Renji advanced in certain classes I didn't, while I advanced in classes he didn't. Soon we didn't see each other much at all. Though such simple things as that couldn't destroy a friendship that had been developed for so long. It was when I was adopted into Kuchiki clan when things really began to fall apart. We were so separated then. I was immediately graduated and put in the Gotei 13 into the 13th squad and well...the rest is history," she finished trailing off. Her expression was now solemn.

Orihime never really knew much about Rukia's past, so hearing it was a little surprising to her.

"_She says how she never knew her family in the first place. Is it because she grew up in Soul Society from a baby or is it because going to Soul Society erases memory of human life? No, the kid Sado-kun knew remembered him and other people remembered their past lives when they were alive as well. Plus Kuchiki-san said how because they can't find their past families, that they make their own. So she must have grown up in Soul Society, meaning she didn't just appear there near the age she looks now. Tōshirō-kun is probably a similar case...Though she told her story as if it happened so quick, I know she left a lot out, but now that I realize it, Kuchiki-san must be over 100 years old. I knew souls aged slower than humans, but I never thought specifically about Kuchiki-san,"_ thought Orihime looking at Rukia in awe as if she were some transcendent being.

Rukia however didn't notice this look as she continued talking, "Though, you need to realize Inoue, that if you say you would slow me down, I could then say I would also slow Renji down," admitted Rukia, trying to use logic with Orihime in one last attempt.

Orihime smirked at this. "But, Kuchiki-san, Abarai-kun isn't even doing anything. When I was at the shop earlier, he was just doing house work. Going and training with him would be good for him too in that case. It would also be good for both of you to re-connect. Urahara-san owes it to you to allow you to borrow Renji from his chores anyways," said Orihime remembering Renji in his rather effeminate apron.

"Heh. I guess you are right Inoue. Thanks just now for reminding me how much I need to beat up both Renji, and Urahara for not only what they said to you, but for everything else both of those guys have done," she said brandishing a smirk of her own before noticing Orihime was getting kind of fidgety as she began edging away.

"Alright Kuchiki-san, I'm going now, good luck with Abarai-kun and Urahara-san," said Orihime who turned and continued walking swiftly away before being stopped by Rukia's hand on her shoulder.

"Good luck with whatever you're doing Inoue. For what it's worth I trust you know what you're doing much more than that idiot in there," she said gesturing towards the abandoned warehouse with a leering nod.

"Good luck to you too Kuchiki-san, and thanks," she said turning around and hugging the raven-haired shinigami before releasing her, "for believing in me. Good-bye!," she shouted, turning back around and running fast, leaving the small waving shinigami behind without looking back.

"_Kurosaki-kun, so far I've been weak, looking back at you as I leave a battle," _she thought, her pace quickening. _"But now, no longer will I look back. Instead I'll push forward without turning around! So then the next time we meet, I'll be next to you so I won't even see your back!" _she continued running, and not looking back before turning a corner.

"Now then, I just have one question," she said aloud to herself while running, carrying the book. It had been a question repeated throughout her mind that day since she woke up that morning and felt it for herself. All day things had happened that kept reminding her.

"Just where do you think you're going Sado-kun!" she shouted into the night sky.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

**Chapter Started: Monday, September 05, 2011, 6:15:08 PM  
>Chapter Finished: Thursday, September 22, 2011, 9:44:00 PM (long chapter is long)<br>Revisions: Sep 23rd 2011- Nov 6th, 2011**

**General Note-**This longer than chapter four chapter is longer than chapter four. Not gonna lie, this is my first official cliffy, since it is non-canon. Expect more of these cliffies, but worse. lol I'm evil like that.

Main Point-The main points in thiss chapter revolve around Orihime's mindset. After the night of the fight with Grimmjow up to leaving the visored after talking to ichigo, she was even more determined to get stronger. Then urahara discourages her, poking holes in her resolve. She thought she had a clear cut plan but yet, still had holes in her resolve that even she didn't realize. Then Rukia lifts her back up and solidifies her resolve, transforming it from the former fragmented state that it was in. Finally Hachi helps fortify it at the end.

The theme of the chapter, and this expository arc in general is, 'The path to acquiring unwavering resolve'. Orihime finally acquired what she noticed Ichigo had during the chapter in the form of not letting anything get in her way I guess I took too long to explain that during chapter six. It was pretty long, but that's OK to me. lol

Comments- So instead of Chad training with Renji, we have Rukia instead so where has Chad been all this time? I know you guys have been wondering this. Where exactly is he 'going'? I'm going to be evil here and say I've given 3 different hints thoughout the story that are possible for not only me to recognize. What does Orihime intend to do instead of heading to Soul Society with Rukia like she does in the canon plot? What is Orihime's 'plan and idea' that she had when she healed herself after the second arrancar fight that has been bugging her throughout the entire chapter? Stay tuned for all of these answers because the AU is here at last. Only a couple more chapters to go before this expository arc is over and we enter the main arc! That's right we aren't even in the main arc yet. Things are picking up at last.

Hachi Training is official! Though it was only a short while, what do you think Hachi taught Orihime? Stay tuned. I'll ask again, what's up with Chad? Next chap, will reveal all. I know you guys are missing Chad alot, but just stay with the story. Chad will have his own chapters as long as this one in the future. I have chapters like the first couple of chapters that switched perspectives, then chapters the focus mostly on one perspective like I have done with Orihime. The only reason that happened is because I use the canon plot which also focused on Orihime at this point in time, plus for the specific plot of this story, but now the AU is here so expect the unexpected from now on. **I suggest re-reading this chapter so you can catch things you didn't catch during the first read. Even I caught things, and I'm the one who wrote it. o_0**

_Don't forget I also put in some hints with Tatsuki. That will be developed in the long term._

**Canon Note-** Orihime knew about Ichigo's mask before the whole 'being scared of his mask in Hueco Mundo' thing happened as well. So I don't know why she did that in Hueco Mundo. She knew about it since during the time when she went to meet with Hachi, the canon shows how Ichigo was training with Hiyori with his mask on in the background, so she most likely saw it then.

*Also, I forgot to mention a couple of chapters back, but Orihime's official hair color is chestnut brown. The anime makes it orange for some reason. Look at the full size icon on my profile to see Orihime's real hair color. It's way different than Ichigo's, and looks better that way.

**Side Note:** **Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.**  
>==================================<p> 


	7. Prelude to Destiny

Decided to publish this a little early. Part one of a two-part arc finale. Author's Note at bottom as always. I don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. Expect Chapter 8 early December. More info on that in the AN at the bottom. That is all.

* * *

><p>Prelude to Destiny<p>

_Redux: Chasing Chad 2_

**September 9th**

**9:42 PM Orihime arrives at her apartment complex.**

Orihime ran up the stairs to her apartment complex to the second floor and burst open the door, hastily running into her room. On her way there, she sensed Rangiku and Tōshirō were in the apartment as well so she wasn't surprised when she opened her door and saw them there. Rangiku sitting in a chair at her desk and Tōshirō on the window sill as if it were his assigned seat.

"Ah Orihime! Did you ever find Ichigo and tell him the news? Captain Commander told you to find him, but as I went and told everyone myself, I realized I couldn't sense him anywhere!" exclaimed Rangiku.

Orihime was nonplussed by the woman's genuine curiosity, looking around he room as if searching for something.

"Oh, yeah I found him Rangiku-san. He's off doing super secret training, so don't look for him," admitted Orihime rather bluntly. She figured telling them straight up would stop any curiosity from growing. Plus she knew a person like Tōshirō would understand the 'not wanting to be bothered while training'."

"Uh...It's not really a secret if you tell us, but it's okay. A guy like Kurosaki should be able to take care of himself," said Tōshirō.

Orihime was now looking up at the biopunk-steampunk screen which caught Rangiku's attention.

"Oh that's right, I forgot we had to move your bed to put in the screen. Pft, it's the captain's anyway fault for not listening to me on a better spot. He just got mad and said to put it in here because he has no sense of style," quipped Rangiku with a bored expression while opening up a magazine.

Tōshirō responded calmly without opening his eyes, "What was that Matsumoto? A vice-captain should learn to take more responsibility. That's not how things went at al-"

"Leave it there." stated Orihime simply.

This quick answer confused Rangiku, "Huh? What do you mean? We can move your bed back. It's right in the next roo-"

"No. Leave the screen up there, and the bed in the other room. I won't be needing it anymore for a while."

Rangiku noticed Orihime's strange demeanour as she put the magazine back down. Huh? What's the matter Orihime?" she questioned. Tōshirō had also opened his eyes after realizing he hadn't been hearing the jubilee that was usually present his host's voice.

"Nothing's the matter. I just won't be needing the bed since I'll be leaving for a while," she stated matter-of-factly, before walking to her dresser and quickly pulling out some clothes.

Before her guests could inquire more, she answered them, "I actually have some training of my own to do. If you can trust Kurosaki-kun by himself, then surely, you can trust me right?" she asked for the second time that night with a smile.

Rangiku being the type of person she was, accepted Orihime's answer as a endearing smile stretched across her lips.

"So, how long will you be gone?"

"Can't say for sure," she said putting various materials in a larger than average drawstring bag. Including a certain book she had recieved from Hachi earlier that night. She pulled the strings of the bag until it clenched shut.

"If you want more details, then you can ask Kuchiki-san. You should be able to sense her spiritual pressure rise any minute now..." she finished with a vague yet knowing smile, slipping into the strings of the bag as she imagined the Kuchiki girl's 'unannounced' arrival at the Urahara Shop.

"I'm sorry for rushing in and leaving so quick, but don't worry. Everything is fine. I promise," she said clapping her hands together as she said it.

"Inoue, this is your home. You don't need to apologize to us," said Tōshirō with the edges of his lips rising into a smirk.

"Hehe , I guess you're right Tōshirō-kun. Plus, this morning I woke up and made a ton of food, so it should last you guys a couple of weeks. I wasn't planning on leaving that long, but alot happened today and um...well it all works out now," chirped Orihme, as happy memories came back to her from her arduous culinary synthesizing.

Rangiku became flustered at this for two reasons; that she was surprised Orihime had cooked so much in the morning, and secondly that she would be able to eat said food on demand. There was however another reason that then flashed through her mind.

That Orihime might possibly be gone for weeks by the way she was talking.

"And Tōshirō-kun, I brought some 'normal' food for you since you didn't seem to like my cooking. It's okay though, since only a few people do anyway. I just think me and those who do have special alien-tastebuds or something. I brought some watermelon yesterday as well if you didn't already find it already. It's cube watermelon. Japanese grow it this way so it can save space in the refrigerator. They probably have the normal shaped ones in Soul Society, but it tastes the same anyway. I'm just telling you so you don't freak out at the shape or something," she finished in an amused tone as she swiftly walked toward the door to go out of her apartment, her guests following her slowly behind before she abruptly stopped.

"Oh and Rangiku-san?" asked Orihime without turning around.

"Yes Orihime?" answered Rangiku looking at the girl's back.

"Thanks again for everything, and tell Momone-san that I said thanks as well. She'll know what for," said Orihime opening the door and closing it.

"Hey, wait a second, how did she know I liked watermelon?" asked Tōshirō with a confused look.

"Oh? Asking me with that look as if I have all the answers," responded Rangiku with a deadpan expression.

"Tch, whatever...," responded Tōshirō, crossing his arms and closing his eyes again.

A very long pause was held.

"I told her yesterday of course when she went shopping. See? I look out for you captain," said an enthused Rangiku slapping her captain on the back.

He however quickly swiveled around to face her, while keeping his composure.

"If you really wanted to look out for me, you would do your share of the paperwork instead of putting it all on me. Anyway, now that the report is finished(the one you didn't help on), let's go to the rooftop for some training of our own."

Rangiku was unfazed by her captain's little side remark, but instead was only fixated on one thing.

"Wha-? You never normally let anybody train with you captain!" exclaimed Rangiku in intrigue.

"Huh? Stop acting so shocked Matsumoto and just go with it for once," said Tōshirō as he went to get their Soul Candies, King and Momone for the most interesting training session in a long time.

**9:52 PM**

Orihime ran down the street with thoughts racing through her mind.

_"Ever since this morning, Sado-kun's reiatsu has gotten dimmer and dimmer. Not weaker, but dimmer as if he were getting farther away. I thought I'd lose my sense of it back when I said 'bye' to Kuchiki-san, but it stopped just now. It's weird, but I can sort of sense his pressure even from this far away, just like I can with Tatsuki-chan. Though, I could sense Tatsuki-chan's 'presence' even before I knew it was 'sensing' or even knew anything about Shinigami and Hollows. Even in Soul Society, I could still feel her, but it was as if she was behind a wall or something..._

_Maybe I can't feel Sado-kun at the same level, but I can definitely feel him as clear as day. I'm usually good at sensing reiatsu anyway, like how I was able to sense Kurosaki-kun behind Hachi-sensei's barrier. Plus Sado-kun's reiatsu is so familiar to me since I've been around him and actually healed him as well. It's kind of like how Hachi-sensei analyzed my reiatsu by healing Tsubaki-kun.. My powers really are similar to Kidō then after all..._

_Either, way he's definitely not in Karakura Town, and it doesn't feel like he's in Naruki City either, since I can sense Madarame-san and Ayasegawa-san over there where Asano-kun lives. So by the way things feel, that just leaves...!" _she realized as she increased her pace.

Karakura Town is located in the south-east of Western Tokyo. Tokyo Prefecture itself, is split between Western Tokyo (which is made up of a number of cities, towns, and villages and basically self-governing municipalities), and the special 'ward' districts to the east. Karakura Town is one of the 'towns' in Western Tokyo, while Naruki City, to the northwest of Karakura where Keigo and Mizuiro live, is one of the 'cities'. Along with Naruki, Karakura is also bordered by two other municipalities. One directly to the slight north east, and one directly to the south. In the one directly to the south, there are two rivers called the Onose and the Karasu Rivers. They are formed as they split apart from one larger river when initially entering Karakura Town from Naruki. From Karakura, they flow into this southern municipality.

The Onose River in that southern town is where Orihime and Tatsuki met every Autum where they try to catch the red dragonflies and see the Autumn flowers and trees. This was also the place of the annual fireworks festival that everyone had attended that summer right before going to Soul Society.

Before flowing out of this town, the Karasu and Onose Rivers form a confluence as they re-merge together to form one larger river that flows all the way out of Tokyo Prefecture into Kangawa Prefecture before heading to Yokohama City itself. Orihime had once absentmindedly followed the river's path herself all the way to Yokohama, trying to chase the red dragonflies much to Tatsuki's dismay*. Though that's a whole other adventure.

Orihime reached the end of the Sakurabashi District where she lived, and entered into Minamikawase District passing by Chad's apartment. She felt where Chad was at, but still wanted to trace his reiatstu and the path he took from beginning to end. While the Onose flowed between the outskirts of the west border of Naruki and the complimentary east border of Karkura, the Karasu River flowed more within Karakura. Directly behind Chad's house's to be exact. His lingering reiatsu seemed to follow the river directly from his house which enabled Orihime to basically trace a straight path of his reiatsu trail towards the neighboring town where she felt him.

_"You've finally stopped. Now, stay right there and don't go anywhere Sado-kun!" _chanted Orihime as she slowly closed in on her oblivious target, her drawstring bag banging against her back as she neared the border to go into the next town.

* * *

><p><em>How the Tiger Got His Stripes<em>

**11:03 PM**

Chad waded back into the sediment buildup in the middle of the river going against the strain of it's flow. Everything flowed against him. From the wind, to the flow of the river, to destiny, everything. He raised his arm back and thrusted forward with his armored arm, blasting against the current in a blast of explosive and refined spiritual pressure for the umpteenth time that night. Pushing back against the flow of destiny. After being utterly outclassed in every category and subset by the arrancars, Chad had fallen into his own slump. Losing against Yammy, then being bedridden for days. Even then, after he was healed by Orihime's Rikka, the arrancar this time came straight for him personally and he rose to meet the challenge only to be instantly knocked back down. The saw-toothed arrancar had nearly killed him off like fodder had it not been for Ichigo. Then, after Chad had gotten his guard back up, following that arrancar's initial surprise attack, he was deemed unnecessary to the battle by Ichigo himself as he ran off with his tail between his legs. Not out of fear, but out of shame of his own weakness.

Those bedridden days leading up to that very moment were all mental trials. He stared at his window thinking over what he did wrong. Thinking about what he would do the next battle. How he would bounce back and fight with Ichigo back-to-back like the old days. Aimlessly he walked around Karakura. Looking at it's citizens. How many of them had lost loved ones at the hands of the arrancar without even knowing it. How he almost became one of those lost loved ones had it not been for Orihime, Urahara, and Tessai. Then Orihime's Ayame and Shun'ō had come and cheered him up even more, going back home with him and healing him. Being healed that way, lifted his spirits. The lingering pain, and psychological attachment to his injury had been holding him back. With them gone he was physically, mentally and spiritually(in both senses of the word) renewed. His thoughts from earlier about rising back up to fight again cemented in his mind. As the arrancar came to engage in battle with him, to simply be instantly defeated after climbing to the top of that pinnacle of confidence was resolve-shattering.

Chad felt over the small hole in his chest with his armored right arm. Just the force of the arrancar's fingers that hadn't even touched him physically, had still poked a finger-tipped size hole right in the middle of his sternum. The dry blood that had been dripping from the wound was caked from over two days time up to the current. His fingers scraped off the caked blood as it fell within his hand. Clenching his fists around the dehydrated sanguinary material, he let out a roar into the night sky as he punched against the current again.

This time, the water completely for a moment, stopped rushing towards him. The blast created a momentary path up the river and the water flew up on each side of the blast finally reaching the height Chad's had been aiming for. However, the water quickly fell back in place and continued rushing past him. A serenading mist surrounded him, a vestigal artifact from the blast. Despite this seeming specticle, the river was extremely wide, and his blast had simply been like launching a boulder into a churning loch.

The increase in the speed of the current at that point in river was dramatically affected by the fusing of the Onose and Karasu rivers further back from Chad's location. However he had concluded that as opposed to air, water would function as a great medium for viewing the true energy of his blasts. It was this opposed to the biased sense of his own reiatsu level from firing blasts into the air all night instead. With attacking the water, he could view a form of physical imprint of his attacks, and liquids always regenerated unlike solids so this made the water of the river quintessential to measuring his attack strength since it couldn't be destroyed like a rock or boulder.

On top of this, firing his blasts against the opposing current acted as a great 'control group' for his little experimental training. The sediment buildup Chad was standing on once again began to give way as it had had hundreds of times before that night. He held his ground on what had long since stopped functioning as a viable support to stand on about two hundred sessions ago. This time it had only held out for two blasts. It couldn''t support the recoil of another attack, let alone Chad standing on it.

_"Alright, I think I've pretty much mastered firing the blasts as many times as I need to, along with increasing the power with each attack so that I'm not just able to do hundreds of weak blasts, but blasts where I can make each one as strong as I want to, and keep doing that as long as I want. My attack itself is really explosive, yet naturally focused and concentrated at the same time so I guess if I work to improve the concentration of my blasts, then that's a last priority. So right now, the top priority is to work o-," _thought Chad as he suddenly jerked his head to the side, barely dodging the incoming projectile as it flew past his head chopping off a few stray hairs off the back of his head.

Chad backed up as the sediment gave way, falling backwards into the river. The rapid movement of water could be heard from under the surface, and as he rose to meet the source his eyes saw a astonishing sight.

The surface of the river was literally being unzipped like a jacket as the projectile flew up opposite of it's flowing path. The water was literally split in half. Where Chad's blasts where extremely destructive with concentrated explosions covering large radiuses, this projectile was extremely clean and cut. It was so much more refined and precise, not exactly blasting the water up into the air as if great force where behind the attack; it was just that the force was so evenly distributed. It was as if it were using that potential explosive force to instead efficiently split this part of the river in two at practically the atomic level. Literal 'walls' of water formed on each side of the projectile's path as the 'sides' of these walls were spliced so cleanly, that for a second they seemed solid with angular edges before they fell back into each other, giving way to the fluid properties of water. There was no 'water flying up into the air', 'serenading mist' and water falling back to the river, or flashy explosions. Simply a perfect bifurcating of the section of the river. All of this happened in a couple seconds and Chad would have missed it if he hadn't gotten his head above the surface of the water in time.

All of a sudden he saw the projectile disappear about fifty meters from him in a bright light that illuminated the night, and saw it go back in a quick trail of light in the blink of an eye to the road on the side of the river. At this point he already knew, but his eyes followed the light anyway until he saw...

"Inoue? What are you doing here?" gasped Chad with his head above the water. He saw Orihme sitting on the railing of the bridge that went over the river. Her legs were kicking back and forth over its edge.

"That's my line," she said for the second time that day. Her face was unreadable in the night sky, though still visible because of the lights on the side of the road.

"You dissapeared, just when I was going to come and talk to you about something. Then something even bigger came up Sado-kun. So I came to find you and when I did it seemed like you were training. I was getting bored just waiting here so I brought out my Rkka, but then Tsubaki got mad and wanted to train too, so I decided to try whatever you were doing in the river, but then Tsubaki almost hit you when I shot him, so I returned everybody to the hairpins," explained Orihime in her signature an all-in-one breath ramble. Her voice kind of had a nervous yet amused innotation. Basically an embarrassed tone at having almost split Chad's head open.

Chad sweatdropped at this, _"How long has she been here without me sensing her? She was bored being alone, so she took out her Rikka to talk to? Isn't that technically talking to herself anyway? And such a straightforward answer about what led up to her shooting Tsubaki, plus she made it seem like I was only about to get hit or something! If I hadn't dodged-..."_

"Wait, what were the things you said you wanted to tell me Inoue?" asked Chad aloud breaking his thoughts as he began to swim towards shore where Orihime was sitting above on the bridge. However, _she _had other plans.

The girl stood up on top of the railings for a moment. The wind blew her hair as she looked down at Chad with a determined, yet hesitant look. She took what looked like a bag off her back and dropped it down on the walkable path of the bridge from ontop the railings. Her face finally viewable with her head closer to the bottom of the bridge lights from standing up.

Chad looked up confused, "Huh? What are you doing Inou-WAIT-" shouted Chad as Orihime abruptly jumped off the railing catching him completely off guard. The girl strangely landed with a light splash. Chad waited for her to resurface, and when she didn't it caused him to sweatdrop even more.

_"Why did her diving form look like somebody pushed her off instead? More importantly, why isn't she coming back up?" _he thought. His comical nervousness, took on a more worried characteristic. _"Inoue wouldn't randomly jump into the water if she couldn't swim right?" _he thought before becoming even more disturbed at his answer to that question._  
><em>  
>"Inoue!" He called swimming over to where she had dovefallen. His call was answered by a burst of pain and a flash of stars as Orihime resurfaced in front of Chad with great force, headbutting him straight in the face.

"Eh? Sado-kun?" asked Orihime at turning around and feeling Chad fall on her back right behind her. However, she then saw that he was unconscious.

"Sado-kun? Sado-kun what happened? was all Chad heard before blacking out from what Orihime thought was fatigue from training, but was completely because of her possibly bulletproof cranium.

**11:14 PM**

Chad woke up surprisingly, feeling extremely good, and not with the suspicious headache he should have had. Not even the normal groggy, lethargic feeling usually associated with waking up.

"Ah, Sado-kun, you're finally awake!" said Orihime who was most pleased with this development.

"Huh? Inoue,..." thought Chad lying on his back before remembering the previous events.

"I had alot to tell you, and yelling from where I was sitting at on the bridge would've be hard, so I tried coming to you instead of you coming to me since I figured you were still training. But after I jumped in and came back up, you were unconcious! I figured you must've been tired from training so hard, so you passed out in the water. That's dangerous! You could have drowned Sado-kun!"

_"__Who__ exactly was the one that was about to drown?" _thought Chad, now thoroughly confused as he resumed his episodic sweatdropping.

"Yeah, I had to get you all the way back to shore and you weigh a ton, but it was easier than I thought it would be..." said Orihime trailing off with what Chad thought was a knowing smile.

_"How did she swim with me all the way back to shore against the current with our ratio of strength and weight differences? Is this what a normal human should be capable of? Even I probably couldn't do that with the same rules applied to me..." _thought Chad sitting up.

"Speaking of the river Sado-kun, that was incredible how you made the water explode into the air like that! You made so much water fly up, that I was sure that I almost saw the river bed! That's crazy," said the girl with her animated expressions.

_"That's some kind of superhuman strength or something! No normal human should be able to do that...but then he's not normal" _thought Orihime unknowingly mirroring Chad's thoughts before her expression transformed into a interrogation-like one. Not an accusational one, just a curious and confused look.

"I know you're training, but what exactly was the point of coming all the way out here, besides not wanting to be bothered?" she inquired.

"'What was the point of coming out here?' That's my line Inoue, if you know I came out here to not be bothered yet still came," said Chad looking away towards the river.

"Hey, now _you_ just stole _my_ line Sado-kun, and I already told you _my _reason that I came here to tell you some things, so listen up. I'll tell you the bigger thing that came up first so I can get it out the way and get to my original reason for coming," she said wringing the water out her clothes.

She told Chad everything about Aizen's plan and the danger that Karakura faced, thus resulting in inevitable war that winter. How she wanted to help, but that Urahara had cut her out. Chad got visibly affected at that point, but per his silent demeanour, continued listening. Orihime got to the point where Rukia had encouraged her and reinforced her resolve, while she conveniently left out anything about Ichigo or the Visored. Only mentioning that Ichigo was training off away from everyone else and that she went to tell him about Aizen's plan as well. She managed to fit that somewhere within her explanations to Chad before finishing her initial answer of why she had come to find him.

Chad stood up when he saw Orihime was done.

"If all that is true Inoue, then there's not a moment to waste. I have to get back to my training. I came out here to train alone. It's no different than what you said Ichigo is doing. Trust me, I know what I'm doing. I've already gotten stronger so I can only improve, and thank you for updating me on what I missed," said Chad, echoing the words of Ichigo that had been said previously that day.

He turned back around facing the river as Orihime's face was hidden by her hair, before he suddenly was bludgeoned from the back and right side of his head.

"You dummy!" screamed a feminine voice.

"Hey woman, shoot me at this guy again so I can actually chop off more than his hair this time!

Chad recoiled across the board at this, regaining his footing to see what had attacked him, but he realized it right after he heard the voices.

"_When did she let her Rikka out? I didn't hear her call them out,_" thought Chad. His back facing the river after he turned back around to face Orihime with her two Rikka floating in front of her face.

"Hey you! Don't just stand there, mouth agape like a monkey! The woman said she had two things to tell you and shes only told you one. You'll stay right here and listen to the rest of it!" shouted Tsubaki.

"'Mouth _agape_ like a monkey'? Ag-_ape _as in 'ape', as in monkey? I see what you did there Tsubaki. Looks like you have a shred of comedy in you after all. Also, Chad, I didn't expect you to be so brash and have a short attention span. Not evenly listening to the rest of what she had to say? Orihime, are you sure we can use him if he's like that? He's just like Ichigo," said Lily, arms crossed with a slight look of disdain and disappointment.

"Hey Four Eyes, stop looking too far into people's words. I wasn't telling another one of your stupid jokes. I haven't heard you tell one joke yet besides that stupid 'wither' one. That was so cliché and lame," chided Tsubaki. Orihime looked up at them with a strange, nervous type of annoyance. Similar to how she had when Hachi couldn't understand her story about how she was taken out of battle after five diffferent explanations, but different.

"Uh-guys, not now please, and yes of course we can Lily. Everything should go as planned as soon a-"

"Um, hey? Inoue? What you guys talking about. 'Use me' for what?" aked Chad, slightly annoyed he was being talked about right in front of while being out of the loop.

Orihime closed her eyes and returned her Rikka, and loosened her posture a little.

"That's the main reason I was talking about Sado-kun. I came specifically to train with you," she said opening up her eyes.

Her bluntness surprised Chad.

"...Inoue...I don't think that's a good idea. I came here to train alone. I even have created my own training 'program' for lack of a better term.," he said looking over at the river.

"Before I train the way you are wanting to train, I must master my basic powers first. I already explained that you should trust me that I know what I'm doing, plus I'm just not good at training with others."

"What are you talking about? Since when have you ever trained one-on-one with somebody since you got your powers? Even when we trained with Yoruichi-san, it wasn't sparring. You should know that yourself. So why would you even say something like that?

Chad however wanted the conversation to end quickly, not being much of a talker himself. He also didn't want to get into a argument. "Inoue, if you really want to get stronger, you should train against somebody stronger than you so that by fighting them, you can gain experience. You should have stayed and trained with Rukia like she wanted you to. She's a much better match for you than I would be.

At this Orihime smirked.

"I'm flattered that you consider me your equal Sado-kun, but as for Kuchiki-san being a 'better match', that's exactly my point. It sounds weird, but I don't need to train with my 'perfect match' or anything like that. That defeats the point of training doesn't it?" she questioned rather innocently.

"Not necessarily. Especially considering Rukia would help you improve the most since that's what I meant by 'better match'.

"But, that's not what _I _meant though, but I'll get to that later. Right now I just want to say you are going about this the wrong way, by trying to improve your basic skills Sado-kun. It may sound strange, but just hear me out for a second," she said walking up closer to Chad.

"Training and honing your basic skills. That type of thing is for people who have time. Right now, both of us need to improve as fast as possible. Honing my skills? I tried doing the exact same thing after we got back from Soul Society. It's why I asked you back on the first day of the new trimester if you had trained any more over summer. Then those two arrancar came and you know what happened then. It's like Urahara-san said. Even though the final battle isn't till winter, there will be more skirmishes until then, and I am proof that traditional honing of skills won't work. You say you feel yourself getting stronger just from this short training, but that's a obvious thing that will come from training, but it doesn't matter right now. Right now we have a short term time scale so we need to do the type of training that is best for 'short term'".

"Now I'm confused Inoue. You say train for 'short term', yet acknowledge we both quickly got stronger from our own short, personal training. Just what are you trying to say here?"

"Yes, our first training with Yoruichi-san, and our experience in Soul Society, along with our most recent training has made us much stronger. I'm saying that right now, we already developed our basic abilities far enough to where we can do the training method that works best for people like us which is sparring. It's um...kind like how Tatsuki-chan taught me martial arts!" she said, happiness in her voice from remembering those nostalgic memories.

_"Arisawa taught her Karate?"_thought Chad.

"Tatsuki-chan taught me that you have to learn the fundamentals before you can do any sparring! Now that we've got our own fundamentals down, all we have to do is fight to get stronger through experience. That method fits Kurosaki-kun perfectly as a good example. _Then_ we can go back and train and refine what we developed from all the fighting and experience, just like Ishida-kun did before coming to Soul Society. Now Kurosaki-kun is doing that refining too, except he is sparring with Hirako-kun's group. Fighting and sparring is always his way to get stronger and I think it is ours as well, so that even after we fight in order to get stronger, he shows that we don't have to even necessarily do any kind of formal or structured training after that...Wow that was confusing, I'm not that good at explaining it really...sorry," she apologized, sweatdropping.

"Hmm. No I think I understood what you said, even though you managed to confuse yourself," stated Chad while making a mental note about 'Hirako's group'.

"You did?" asked a relieved Orihime.

"Yeah. Since we have a small amount of time till this 'winter war' where probably even more powerful enemies than what we've seen will appear, we should spar instead of traditional training since that produces the most results in the short term. Then refine what powers we gain from that in the long term with actual formal type training or the type of training I was doing in the river or whatever Ishida did. I guess you think since our powers were awakened by Ichigo, that we can develop as fast as him or something? But, you did say 'people like us', so I guess you meant all of us instead, including Ishida, but we don't know what kind of training he did, except that he did it alone like both of us have done now," said Chad referring to Uryuu's pre-Soul Society training.

Little did they know, even though Uryuu had been trained traditionally by his grandfather Sōken Ishida, he had 'refined' his skills before Soul Society, and had just recently undergone his own version of 'sparring' with his father.

"Though, even if all of that is true, I truthfully don't think I'm the type for sparring with you Inoue. There's still the fact that I made so much progress in one night, and we have until winter for the actual decisive battle, despite anything that happens before then. You compared us both to Ichigo, and Ishida, but I am neither of them. Everyone has their own method, but the method you are suggesting wouldn't work out. There's lots of reasons I said Rukia would work better, but the main one being that my powers are very destructive. They aren't really for sparring or helping people gain power as much as they are for completely destroying whatever I hit."

"Wheres the logic in that? And a shinigami like Kuchiki-san's zanpakutō or kidō isn't the same? With the ability to cut and slice anything normally, then there's whatever her zanpakutō's ability is. Even then, who knows whatever other destructive kidō there is. Above all of that, you're telling this 'my powers are too destructive' argument to the person who has defensive and healing powers."

At this, Chad got finally got visibly enthused in the discussion.

"You aren't getting it Inoue. I could fight hollows before I even had my powers. After I got them, I could basically destroy them in one hit. Sure, Kuchiki could slice and cut you, but at least you'll only be injured. At worse, even if you were really hurt, there would be somebody there to heal you since she wanted to take you to Soul Society or she could heal you herself. I doubt she would injure you that far anyway since she can control her cutting power and it would only be sparring. Now compare that to me," said Chad making a fist with his right hand.

Sure someone would survive if I punched them full force normally, even though they would have broken bones, but do you really think a normal, physical human body could survive one of my punches when I activate my arm? Even, though it is still a punch, it's still my offensive ability. It's like expecting another spiritually aware human to survive against your offensive ability, being Tsubaki. Now, let alone when I charge up my punch with my reiatsu blasts? There is no holding back on either of those attacks of mine. Both of those can easily kill hollows. Plus we aren't in Soul Society. There's nobody to heal you all the way out here. Even then, it's only one of the reasons I don't want to spar with you," said Chad with a retrospective look before sighing.

The irony wasn't lost on Orihime as she smiled on the inside. _"Does he realize what he just said about expecting another spiritually aware human to survive against Tsubaki?"_

Chad actually started up to talk again after his sigh.

"Fighting to get stronger huh? I know it's not the same so don't think I am making a comparison, but it reminds me of when I was younger. Before I lived here in Karakura, I lived in Mexico. Well, actually I was born in Okinawa, before moving to Mexico during early elementary school. That's how I knew some Japanese and even some English since my parents kept teaching me more even after we moved away. Believe it or not, back then I was a complete hothead. Cocky and rebellious. I was pretty troubled, mostly influenced by my both of my parents dying when I was only eight. It really upsets me that I don't have many memories of them as I would like to have. After that, my 'Abuelo', or grandfather adopted me, and I had to uproot and move completely across the country from this region called Costa Chica along the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, all the way to another state called Baja California Sur, or South Baja California. I was really distressed during that time. Abuelo had to work so hard, that I didn't get to see him as much as I'd want to, and being in a new area, and everything that was going on, I didn't adjust good at all. I grew a lot during that time and I used my height and strength to bully kids I didn't like. Even ones older than me. I fought so much, and got so much stronger during that time. I fought to get stronger.

Abuelo always scolded me whenever he found out I was in trouble, meaning I got scolded a lot. But I always ignored him until one day the parents and older siblings of the boys who I fought, all confronted me. As they were about to finish me off, Abuelo came and took all the blows until they left. Then he gave me this coin," he said holding the necklace around his neck.

"He told me to keep it as a symbol, so that I would always remember that I had purpose for my fists that I had to decide myself. I learned and made my decision to not swing my fists for myself and selfish reasons. What he did that day had a great impact on me. It's because of him that a grew up to even be a half-decent person. Even after he died, I was and always will be eternally grateful. But when he did die I no longer had anyone to rely on. His wife, my abuela had long since passed.

At his small funeral, a man approached me claiming he was great friends with my parents from when they were living in Okinawa working as contractor and civilian workers at Kadena Air Base. The man was Japanese, yet spoke broken Castilian Spanish to me. Something he probably learned as a hobby at university. That threw me off at first, but after talking with him, he said how my parents had lived and owned property off base in Kadena Town itself. I don't understand or remember how he explained the whole legality of the issue, but somehow they had left it to my abuelo, and when I reached a certain age or he died, I would inherit it. It just so happened that he died before I even reached the required age, so there was a whole behind the scenes legal thing that I still don't understand. I'm not even sure if I am remembering how it went correctly, so don't take my word for it. However, he was granted custody of me.

Though, by that time, I was extremely independent, and he knew this. So since he was short on money, yet still cared about me because of my parents and his loyalty to them, he had the home in Kadena Town sold, to buy land at least near where he lived in Yokohama. Karakura was chosen, since living in Yokohama City is really expensive, and Karakura was cheap despite being so close to the main city of Tokyo. Plus, at the same time it was not in a rundown neighborhood or anything. That's when I went to Mashiba Middle with Ichigo in eighth grade. It was Ichigo who reinforced in me not just to not swing my fists for myself, but to swing them for a cause and to use my power to help others. Anyways, you could say I am legally emancipated, but Japan's age of majority isn't until you are twenty years old for some reason, so the friend of my parents is still technically my legal guardian and supplies me with money and other things, and sometimes visits..." said Chad trailing off.

Up to this point he had been doing some very uncharacteristic rambling, but now his tired and true custom of trailing off in the middle of an explanation was showing through.

Orihime had looked on with an about face. It seemed she was just learning everybody's life story today. Rukia's, Renji's, Hachi's, and now Chad's. Though Chad's specifically had touched a note with her even more so than the others as a warm smile crept across her lips. Her hair being stroked along by the wind of the moonlit night.

"That was an amazing story Sado-kun. I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to share that with me. We're really more alike than you think, although in different ways if that makes sense. I don't really remember either of my parents. My brother, Sora never told me himself, but after he died my grandmother told me that he ran away from home with me when I was just three and he eighteen because our parents were 'dysfunctional', but I never asked more than that. Our aunt and grandmother supported us with money and then me alone especially, since he died when I was about nine. My grandmother was about to make me move to Yokosuka with her, but Tatsuki-chan's mom agreed to help watch over me if I was to stay in Karakura. Even then, grandma always came to see me. Then earlier this year, Sora came back as a hollow attacking Tatsuki-chan and I in my apartment, but Kuchiki-san and Kurosaki-kun took care of it in the end with my help. Hmmm," she continued with her index finger on her lips as a smile broke out. "It may seem insignificant pointing this out, but we both live alone and have lost people important to us in our lives...We even both live in apartments!" she said as if just realized the latter detail, with shock on her face.

"Umm hehe, more importantly though, we both are in the same position. Actually, we always have been," she said smiling and rising up a finger as if making a point.

"Together we both got our powers awakened from Kurosaki-kun. We were first _formally _introduced together to the world of the afterlife together by Urahara-san since my encounter with Sora as a hollow didn't really count (my memory got erased back then, but I never really forgot. I was just in denial, and didn't want to remember until Urahara explained everything to us). Getting our basic skills down together with Yoruichi-san, means we've already trained with each other already. We said together that we'd help Kurosaki-kun no matter what, the day we both left class, following him to help him fight that hollow. We both wanted to get stronger to protect people close to us, and recently both of us were left feeling too weak to even do anything. Not being able to initially find out anything about Hirako-kun, and the two separate arrancar attacks made us realize that much.

Though now, both of us have recovered from those events, ready to come back stronger than ever. I can see it in your eyes that you want to get stronger Sado-kun and I know you can see that in mine as well. That unwavering resolve. I could tell since you got hurt in the last attack that your resolve had shattered as if it were made out of glass. It was inflexible, but now that I'm helping you put the pieces of it back together like how Kuchiki-san plugged up the holes in mine, I can see that right now, we're truly are in the same spot. Now that both our drives are so strong, nothing can shatter our resolves anymore. No matter what happens, no matter how many times we fall down, we will always be able to get back up. Our resolves aren't easily broken or shattered or pierced like before. Now, just like the water in the river over there, no matter how many times we are attacked, we'll just keep reforming and coming back. The mental block is gone. Nothing can hold us back anymore!..." said Orihime. It was now _her_ soul that was quivering in her eyes.

"Inoue..." said Chad in genuine awe.

"Your abuelo sounds like a wonderful man Sado-kun. I know from your words that he was as important to you as Sora was to me. If that's the case, then you should know that you would be honoring your abuelo's wish by fighting in order to gain strength so that you can have enough strength to use your fists to protect others in the first place. You said yourself, that all the fighting you did when you were little, and simply sparring for training isn't the same at all. All of this is why I wanted to train with you above everyone else.

And, back to what I was trying to say before, unlike Kuchiki-san who you said would be great for me to train with instead of you, it is you yourself who can understand me the most. To understand my will to get stronger the most, since you feel exactly the same because of our exact same situations. Your worries about my not being able to handle your hand to hand close combat style of fighting also goes into my decision. Tell me, just how am I supposed to get stronger by fighting an opponent I actually am able to handle? I _need_ to train against somebody specifically like you. You yourself said training against somebody who is stronger or had an advantage is the only way to improve," said Orihime, slightly ad-libbing Chad's statement, yet staying true to its meaning.

At this, Chad seemed to visibly give way to Orihime's convincing as he uncrossed his arms, although he had one last question. Not to criticize or knock her down, just to simply question her because of a certain detail.

"Alright, Inoue, you make a lot of good points. You seem to have really thought this over, but just tell me this. If it's beneficial for you to fight against somebody with a opposing fighting style to yours like my close combat-melee style, then what exactly is beneficial to _me_ besides the 'mutual understanding' thing you were talking about," asked Chad as he looked up at Orihime only to be hit off guard with a wave a reiatsu.

Apparently, Orihime had taken Chad's final question as a 'yes' to her proposal. A vaguely visible wind seemed to pick up around Orihime, flowing around her like a silent tempest as her eyes shone bright blue with reiatsu, glowing into the night sky.

_"She's really serious about this?" _thought Chad, thoroughly surprised.

He'd known Orihime had been serious from the start, but to see her brimming with confidence and resolve still shocked him. He thought how Rukia must have done a really good job encouraging the girl. He had been depressed until Orihime's Rikka had healed him from D-Roy's attack. Determined, yet still a little down while he was training until his talk with Orihime, but now he seemed more determined than ever as well. In a way Orihime was sort of 'paying it forward' from Rukia.

"Don't you worry about anything Sado-kun. I'll demonstrate why you don't have to worry about injuring my body with either your punches or blasts and I'll personally show you exactly how fighting me will benefit you, but if you _fight_ back you better not _hold _back for both of our sakes. If you do you aren't just defeating the purpose of helping yourself, but actually hurting me by actually_ not_ trying to hurt me," said Orihime as her reiatsu crested in a burst.

Chad took that burst as the signal to augment his arm with his armor as his light blue-white reiatsu became visible as well to complement Orihime's in the darkness of midnight.

"You also don't need to worry about anything Inoue. I understand everything now. I can tell your reiatsu isn't at it's highest so you must've done some kind of other training yourself before your came out here that you somehow _conveniently_ forgot to mention earlier. You've really planned everything out over the past few days. I'm impressed. Though since both of us aren't at our maximum right now because of training, it should be even, so no excuses. I'll admit, your choice of words and whatever training you did has made me curious as to what exactly you're going to do," said Chad getting into a battle stance.

"That was what I'd hoped for. So I know I won't disappoint you," said the girl with another knowing smile, raising her hands up to her hairpins as the moon reached its peak position in the now, _morning sky_.

* * *

><p><em>Midnight Duel: The Princess vs The Tiger<em>

**September 10th  
>12:00 AM. A standoff, the quiet before the storm...<strong>

"Well disappointments are one of the few things I hate, so that's good to know Inoue. Ready when you are," said Chad fortifying his stance.

Four bright lights surrounded Orihime's head in response to Chad's statement as they flew out into the night sky in different directions, causing him to be on alert.

_"She released her Rikka! I've got to attack before she gets them in any type of formation!" _thought Chad as his eyes glowed out into the night sky with reiatsu.

Charging at Orihime, he punched at full power without charging an energy blast, as Orihime to his growing surprise did nothing to show any fear or wanting to dodge. Right before his punch made contact with the bridge of her nose, he hit a golden glowing wall of energy, sending shockwaves through the air.

"Wow, I'm glad you didn't even hesitate to punch me full force just now Sado-kun!" remarked a genuinely delighted Orihime from behind the whirring wall.

"_Her Santen Kesshun! When did she summon it?_" thought Chad, but before he could even comprehend, Orihime raised her hand towards the shield and it began pushing Chad back at great speed.

All Chad could do was quickly dig his foot into the ground as quickly as he caught up to what was going on. At first his foot simply skipped across the ground since he was being pushed back at great speed, but he gained adequate footing and actually slowed the shield's progression down. Quickly, he stopped it entirely with barely any help from his right arm until he was pushing back against the shield, stopping it from moving entirely. Chad and Santen Kesshun were in a stalemate power struggle.

"_What! He stopped it!_" thought Orihime in alarm.

Promptly, Chad actually began pushing against the shield, gaining ground of his own, before exploding into a full charge back towards the shield's creator. Abruptly he stopped as the shield's momentum kept it going. He stepped back, charged up a weak reiatsu blast and smashed directly through the center of it, creating a hole and cracks throughout it.

As quickly as the shield shattered, it reverberated with reiatsu from its three corners where the Rikka were located, reforming around Chad's arm before he could pull it back out. The shield surrounded him at his shoulder on his right arm.

"_Her shield regenerated around me, now...URGH! I'm trapped!_" thought Chad, as he tried pulling out, but couldn't get proper footing in the position he was it. He charged up another blast, causing the shield to begin cracking.

"Santen Kesshun," said Orihime reciting her partial Kotodama to strengthen the shield from afar as she began walking towards Chad with a quick pace.

The cracks dissolved once again as Santen Kesshun glimmered with renewed energy, rose into the air, and turned parallel to the ground with Chad still being held within it as it regenerated. It tightened even harder against his shoulder until it was squeezing around it like it was trying to pop his arm off.

"That's 'delayed incantation' Sado-kun. I can strengthen my attacks by calling their name if I didn't already do it initially. Even now it's not at full strength since I didn't say the full kotodama. You'd better hurry and use your full power to break out of it.

_"You can thank Hachi-sensei for teaching me how the rules of kid_ō_ can be applied to my techniques Sado-kun,...along with this next one..," _thought Orihime as she reached the area where Chad was being held and raised up her right hand pointing her index finger towards the sky where Santen Kesshun was floating above her head.

Chad saw this gesture and immediately still somehow managed to charge up a full power energy blast, but his positioning prevented him from reaching complete potential energy. The shield was floating under him, holding him seven feet above the ground with his entire right arm stuck in the shield making his lower body lean over the side of the shield. Shooting an energy blast would only shoot at an awkward angle oblique to the ground, not at Orihime.

"It's no use Sado-kun. Now that you've showed me what a full power energy charge of yours feels like, I already am used to the way your blasts feel so that I can make Santen Keshun the perfect type of density for your type of blasts, and every time you attack it, I adapt it. I'm only able to do it because, you're doing the same attack as far as reiatsu quality is concerned, but just making it stronger. I can easily prepare Santen Kesshun to match your blasts by feeling how strong your attacks will be each time so as not to not let Santen Kesshun get cracked by your attacks any longer. It's not perfect, but this is just one of the things I've trained for around the time school started," she thought referencing the training she did in the special spot she had found just eight days earlier to practice her abilities.

"But this here," continued Orihime raising her arm completely up, "...is something I learned just a little more recently,..." she said pressing her finger into Santen Kesshun above Chad's arm. Her finger fused into the shield just as her hands had diffused through Hacchi's **Hachigyō Sōgai **( 八爻双崖, _Eight Joined Twin Cliffs_) barrier earlier that night. That experience had clearly influenced her, and she had already learned from it.

"Invisible, infinite void! Formation of the spatial curtain to parry ye defamers! The fabric ebbs 'tween to repel thee!" she shouted as spiritual energy flowed out of her fingertips into the shield causing it to glow brighter.

_"A-A kidō spell? !" _yelled Chad in his mind as his eyes widened in shock, charging up a final blast in vain.

"**Hado # 1, Shō **(衝, _Thrust_)!" she shouted launching Santen Kesshun into the air in a bright shockwave of force. The near sub-G force that the full incantation spell generated only served to augment the already powerful pushing force of Santen Kesshun.

Chad rode the shield, as for a few seconds, everything was a blur. When his motion abrupty stopped, he could see clearly above the canopy in the nearby forest. He had to be about nineteen meters up in the air, and his inertia caused his entire body to jerk up higher from the abrupt stop while his arm kept him secured in the shield. Though before he could even make of what exactly happened, the shield dissipated, and three bright lights, flowed back to what he now saw was Orihime on the ground. Having the shield dissipate with the effect of his inertia still in play, caused him to be slung even higher into the air before finally plummeting down to the earth like a rock.

Orihime watched as he fell from the sky, hitting their riverside battleground with a sickening crunch.

"_Why didn't you break your fall with a reiatsu punch Sado-kun!_" thought Orihime running over to Chad right next to the river's shore, readying to summon Shun'ō and Ayame.

Before Orihime cold fathom what happened next, Chad was up, and bolted at her from point blank range.

It all happened so fast that she didn't even know what she shouted in her mind out of reflex. Yet in that same second, she still raised her hands to her head to ready Santen Kesshun, her doe eyes forseeing the incoming doom.

"Too late!" shouted Chad, thrusting forward his right armored first sans reiatsu blast, impacting her right profile. It sent her careening in the air, landing in the nearby forest on the side of the bridge and river. The very same forest Chad had scouted out in the air. Drops of bright red liquid, lined her aerial path into its darkness, before they hit the ground being absorbed into it.

Chad de-materialized his arm and regained his posture.

_"You may have analyzed my blasts Inoue, but I figured out your timing for summoning your shield. You can't even block since you have no guard when you raise your hands up to face to summon them, and that takes time by itself. I just had to be that much faster. And even if you can guess the power of my blasts, you won't always be right, I haven't even been able to properly attack Santen Kesshun at full power, and my training in the river earlier means I can always change both the power, and reiatsu quality behind my blasts now, unlike what you think. Even if you could block everything I throw at you, all it took was for me to be that much faster and only have to get in one punch to beat you. Where's that secret you said you had to be able to handle my 'melee punches' Inoue? For your sake right now, I hope it wasn't only all that manipulating of Santen Kesshun you did. But then what was up with that Kid_ō she did? That was a kidō right?_ When did she le-," _thought Chad before his eyes widened, he turned around swinging a right backhand to a seemingly chipper Orihime who was prepared and dodged, swinging her head to the left.

_"How did she get behind me? She's not even injured!" _thought Chad in alarm noticing the striking lack of blood on her face.

After Chad's backhand missed, in the blink or an eye, Baigon, Hinagiku, and Lily formed Santen Kesshun around Chad's wrist.

As he belatedly materialized his arm the shield abrupty yanked Chad forward towards his opponent. Orihime then swung her own right arm back, before thrusting forward in a palm stike with her index finger pointing outward glowing with white energy.

"Shō! She yelled, transforming the palm strike thrust into a hammerfist, which smashed into Chad's head as he was pulled into it.

Chad's head snapped back from the force which then traveled through his entire body. But Santen Kesshun still held him in place from falling back, forcing his body to take all the recoil.

Suddenly, his head snapped forward in a motion to headbutt Orihime.

Orihime closed her eyes, waiting for the blow, but felt none.

She opened her eyes to see Chad stopped his headbutt midmotion, wide-eyed before returning to his normal standing position.

_"Man, that was way too close," _thought Chad, realizing how close he almost came to practically inducing permanent brain damage to himself.

_"Huh? He stopped, but why? And, my Sh_ō_-hammerfist didn't even faze him! Even if it wasn't full incantation, what is he made of? It didn't even break any skin! Plus, he pushed back Santen Kesshun like it was nothing earlier and barely even needed his right arm to do it. And he easily took that crazy fall with no injuries at all without even using a reiatsu blast to cushion his fall. He's so tough!" _thought Orihme in awe, as she stared at Chad for a couple of seconds before feeling a wave of reiatsu hit her like a Santen Kesshun shield itself. She backed up from sheer recoil, shielding herself with her arms.

A roar echoed into the morning sky, as Chad, charged up a complete blast that began cracking the shield. At just the slightest crack, Chad raised his foot to the shield to hold it in place as he yanked back, breaking free before Orihime could strengthen it with the rest of her kotodama.

_"I don't know what exactly you did, but this time there's no holding back, Inoue!"_

He raised his arm back in a broad motion, preparing to swing, but...for some reason his arm kept rising. As if the inertia from the backswing had made his arm continue to rise in the air, before it actually separated below the elbow. Energy from the reiatsu blast imploded causing this rougue forearm to spin up into the night sky from the force, before being consumed in an explosion of blood and uncontrolled reiatsu like a firework. It fell to the ground, a smoldering, distorted limb.

In the second that this happened, Chad managed to realize what exactly had happened. His arm has been completely spliced off below the elbow joint.

"GGAUH!" yelled Chad grasping at his limb, before a golden aura encompassed his being, and the pain just vanished. It wasn't a numbing feeling; the pain just no longer existed. It felt as if he were whole even with a piece of his arm missing. Strangely enough, despite his injury, his combat armor was still materialized from his shoulder down, and this was so for the severed limb on the ground was as well, as if showing a testament to Chad's durability.

"Phew! That was actually scary! If I hadn't stopped you, who knew what would've happened," said Orihime in exasperation, leaning over with hands on her knees.

Chad looked on in silence, no longer holding his shoulder, yet still in shock. Blood hadn't even managed to come out before Orihime stalled it with her technique.

Orihime locked eyes with Chad for a moment before saying, "Hold on a sec Sado-kun," turning to the right to look at the destroyed limb on the ground.

_"Why hasn't it transformed back to normal? It's the same as before when the big arrancar smashed his arm and it didn't change back. Hmm, I guess it doesn't matter, since that just makes things easier," _thought Orihime. She turned to face the still activated Santen Kesshun floating to Chad's right.

"Hmmm...Guys, move forward together towards the center to make the shield smaller, but we can make use of that hole," she said, making a clasp gesture to indicate what she meant, and referring to the damaged part of the shield in the center.

Baigon, Hinagiku, and Lily all moved together towards the center of the shield, making a sort of proportionally smaller Santen Kesshun while keeping the hole intact.

"Alright let's go," she said raising the shield over her head horizontally, and moving her arm forward, gesturing it to go forward before she lowered it down over Chad's severed forearm. She used the hole that Chad had created to surround the limb on the ground, before regenerating the shield just enough, until it closed around it, securing it in pace.

She raised the shield, bringing it back towards her and Chad by the river and turned it parallel to herself. Then, she pushed it into the barrier of Sōten Kisshun, allowing the top half of Chad's arm to in turn diffuse into Santen Kesshun, thus linking up with the severed forearm that was being held in place. Being cut so cleanly, everything lined up correctly despite all the damage the forearm had taken in the small implosion and explosion.

"Sōten Kisshun," recited Orihime to speed up the healing process. Before, it had just been purposely healing extremely slow so as to stop the initial pain and blood loss. The initial lack of kotodama had helped to accomplish that feat easier.

Chad's arm began reconnecting and he regained feeling in his forearm.

_"This feels so strange," _thought Chad. The healing felt different than when she had healed his arm before.

This was probably because there was no specific order to the healing of his arm in general and this was a different injury. The explosion had mashed all the muscle sinews of his forearm, so as he regained feeling in his lower arm, he felt the reconnecting and solidifying of tissues. Nerve endings were reborn, and the top epidermis layers of skin and black armor reappeared as if grafted from thin air. The radius and ulna regained their equilibrium with each other as they slightly shifted back together. The metacarpals, carpals, and phalanges, all re-set into their original positions. Inflamed tissue shrunk back as if never inflamed, and everything systematically went back all together; no one section regenerating too much faster than another section so that it was then possible to regenerate orderly on a microscale.

Within about under a minute, Chad's arm had been regenerated and good as new, bursting at the seams with reiatsu at his first and upper wrist as usual before he powered it down. To think she had actually returned it to the state of right when he was about to fire his energy blast was mind-numbing.

Dispersing Santen Kesshun and Sōten Kisshun, Orihime returned the Rikka into hairpins.

Wiping some sweat off her brow, she stood erect stretching her arms out.

"Phew! All done Sado-kun!"

Chad rose his hands up looking at them and clenched them together, forming a fist repeatedly.

"Hmm," he grunted, "Thanks Inoue...," and turned to look towards the river again.

However, Orihime wasn't going to let him just tune everything out like usual.

"Why did you forget about Tsubaki-kun, Sado-kun?"

At this, Chad turned his head around seeing Orihime with her arms crossed and paused for a moment before replying.

"Forget about Tsubaki? How could I even _try_ to do that?" asked Chad with a smirk on his lips remembering the chaotic training sessions with Yoruichi.

"_Not to mention he tried to slice my head off earlier," _he thought, his amused smile turning into an comically anxious one.

"I just didn't sense him coming. I didn't see you launch him from your hands like you usually do or even do any kind of gesture. Though now that I think about it, wasn't he destroyed by the arrancar? So it seems you've restored him somehow. That's good...," said Chad trailing off.

"I'll explain all of that later. Right now, I'll answer the question I know you have about what I did after you punched me into the forest and how I got behind you. You were surprised right?" said Orihime smiling.

"How could I not be? I know I hit you point-blank, but..."

"Yeah, don't doubt yourself Sado-kun. I got hit alright, and it hurt even worse than getting backhanded by the arrancar. I saw the punch coming and when it hit, it uh...it's hard to describe, but let's say that basically my consciousness flickered like a lightbulb. I was vaguely aware of what had happened before I felt myself tumbling on the ground, and coming to a stop. I don't even know how much I was injured. Probably broken bones and all from the fall, but I know I couldn't even feel my face. While I was barely conscious, I wordlessly called out Ayame and Shun'ō. I had been planning to use them on you when you fell from the sky, but I guess you had other plans," said Orihime in a voice of playful accusation.

"Anyway, they came out and I used them to heal myself while I was still barely conscious. It was really weird. I mean, at first I was barely conscious so the healing must have been weak. Especially since I didn't even use the kotodama or call their names. But the more I healed the more conscious I became, and the more power I could put into Sōten Kisshun, until I was fully awake, and tunneled all my reiatsu into it. Once I was conscious enough to realize fully what had happened, I didn't know how much time had passed and I knew you would catch on soon. Even now, I'm not completely healed in that spot since that would have taken more time."

_"She healed herself? It seems like that would be an obvious thing to do. So obvious that it never even crossed my mind!" _thought Chad.

"With that in mind, I sensed you were still outside the forest, and since I was near the entrance to it, I couldn't just walk out now could I? I summoned Santen Kesshun and merged with it. Then I made it fly underwater since I was right next to the river. I used the current to help me speed up until I felt I'd gone far enough. So I came up, still merged with Santen Kesshun, and saw you. And that's when I ran to attack you after getting out of the shield.

I knew you'd be caught off guard, so I saw your backhand coming. You did it out of reflex, so it was easy to dodge. Then I used the Santen Kesshun to hold you in place again, so I could punch with the power of Shō. On a spur of the moment, I decided to turn the palm strike into a hammerfist, since punching you straight on with only my human fist combined the force of Shō would probably break my hand. It almost makes me wish I had powers like yours for times like that Sado-kun," said Orihime holding her hand as if she were thinking about it being broken.

"Trust me, the feeling is mutual sometimes Inoue," said Chad looking at his newly restored right arm again in a daze.

"_And for my sake, I'm glad you didn't have powers like mine for moments like that. Imagine if she combined the power of my punches with Shō and used it on me. A better question would be what if I did that myself..._"

"Hmm what happened next? Oh yeah, my hammerfist had no effect at all, I guess because it wasn't a punch , but after that you were about to headbutt me or something and then you stopped? I still don't get that," said Orihime with a puzzled look.

_"It's because I didn't want put myself in a coma!," _thought Chad sweatdropping at his near death experience with Orihime's hard head.

"Then you actually broke out of Santen Kesshun before I could strengthen it! Nothing I had used on you up till then had even scratched you so I was scared for a second or two, simply out of shock. But everything was under control since luckily I had Tsubaki on cue for that. I released him at the beginning of our fight if you didn't notice."

Chad's mind flashed back to the scene of the _four_ bright lights moving away from Orihime's head at the start of the fight which had made him apprehensive at the time.

_"All the way back then? !"_

"I'm not sure if you realize this, but during the time in Soul Society, while I was with Ishida-kun, I trained till I was able to do all my techniques without my kotodama which I need to do any of my techniques. However, when I don't use the kotodama as you probably figured out, the attacks are weaker. But even saying only part of the kotodama strengthens them. It is sort of like how kidō spells and zanpakutō attacks work. Well...not so much the last one since for zanpakutō's you either say the full attack name or no attack name, but you get what I'm saying.

In Tsubaki-kun's case, I just used Koten Zanshun as you were about to punch me. Even, though it was weaker, he was able to slice right through you since you were as unguarded as I was when you punched me into the forest. Hmmm...If you think about it, we were both defenseless right when we were about to use a technique.

Anyway, I had Tsubaki-kun always hover above me in the air in case I wasn't able to summon him out in time or something, then I could just shoot him. How come I didn't have to shoot him out of my hand 'like usual'? I don't need to unless I want him at complete full speed and power. Since he is a offensive type, I guess there is more required for him to be at his strongest, so along with his kotodama, there's firing him completely from my hands. But it makes sense that it's not mandatory for me to do that every time I want to fire him. I mean, it's not like I have to do anything like that with any of the other Rikka. Plus, using him this way is actually pretty new to me..."

Chad observed the girl for a moment. _"This is a completely different Inoue. The old Inoue would never cut my arm off like that, let alone practically beg for a fight, even if it was for training. What happened? It definitely has to do with whatever else happened earlier today or technically yesterday since it's probably past midnight now. What is this training she said that she did recently? Looks like I'm going to have to go along with her plan after all and keep sparring with her to bring everything out. Either way, her being this way is probably for the best...plus I can probably still get some more answers without having to fight yet..."_

Chad finally spoke up, "So it all makes sense now after you explained it. I don't think I've ever heard of you actually healing yourself at all."

"Well, I never thought of it either until the arrancar attacks. Up to then I'd never been seriously injured or really injured at all. I mean, I didn't get so much as a scratch in Soul Society, so the situation never came for me to even consider something like healing myself.. So when I finally did, it was about two nights ago at the same moment when I first started planning to train with you. I healed the injuries I got from the first arrancar attack. So right now, I'm basically good as new."

Chad walked up closer to Orihime and crossed his arms, pleased at getting more information.

"It's good that you're finding new ways to use your powers, but don't make it seem like your healing doesn't have a flaw. Already, I've noticed something. Your 'healing yourself' is simply aesthetic. What I mean is that when you heal others, you use your reiatsu to do so. You act as the outside source of energy to restore their energy and stop them from losing more energy by healing their wounds. However, with healing yourself, you are just using your own reiatsu, meaning there is no other outside source of energy. You may heal the wound, but you still loose alot more reiatsu in the end. Even so, it is much better than any other healing techniques that I know of. Though the other downside I've noticed is that you have to stay still while you heal yourself or heal anything for that matter. But, healing your wound in the first place has its own advantages, like being able to fight more efficiently without being held back by injury. Anyways, I guess you can say I was kind of worried about your extra reiatsu loss since you seem kind of drained Inoue. This 'spar' and whatever training you did right before getting here...Can you really keep up if we keep fighting?" asked Chad with a taunting smirk.

Orihime took the taunt in stride, managing to not be caught off guard, before smirking back.

"You didn't look too good yourself earlier Sado-kun. Even after I took the time to heal you after your training when you fell unconscious in the river. I had to carry you to shore with Santen Kesshun and then heal you, hoping you'd wake up. But now you already look pretty tired. Even now I only restored your arm, not all your reiatsu. And, 'can I keep up?' Using the Rikka for long periods of time is what my initial 'traditional' training after Soul Society and before the arrancar attacks was all about," said Orihime beginning some static, and dynamic stretching.

_"So she really doesn't realize the actual reason why I passed out...and that's how she got me out the river so easily?...And why I felt so good when I woke up!" _thought Chad before quickly responding.

"I'll admit that I was careless letting you attack me like that, but now I know more what I'm up against. Plus, this time I'm coming at you with everything I've got from the start. You still won't have time to shield yourself from my attacks just like before, and then after that I won't allow you to even heal yourself. You may think you know all there is to know since you watched my training, but you haven't seen anything yet."

_"'I watched his training?' At least he's not using that as an excuse, saying something like 'he didn't get to watch my training'," _thought Orihime.

"Wow Sado-kun, I didn't realize you were such the big talker. Maybe Lily was on to something after all. You 'know what you're up against'? I don't think you do. As for your punches, who said you'll manage to hit me again at all?" she said doing a stretch for her right quadricep.

"Ahh~," she said finishing her stretch. "You're right Sado-kun. This was a pretty good warm-up, but now let's fight seriously. You better pull out whatever you're talking about that you have up your sleeve, because I'm rolling up mine," she said turning her idiomatic expression into a literal action by actually rolling up her sleeves.

_"Ha. Even when she acts all serious like this, she's still the same Inoue," _thought Chad with an amused expression before it turned serious itself.

_"But, I know she's not bluffing. She still has plenty of fight left in her. If anything it's me who should be questioned," _thought Chad looking again at his restored right arm with a pause before powering it up.

_"Alright, this fight will be the beginning of everything so I've got to make it count for something!,'" _thought Orihime seeing Chad's action before taking on a stance that had the vestigial influences of a Hachiji-dachi karate kata(stance, form)(courtesy of Tatsuki), but was mixed in with some other form. She took the hybrid form as if trying to remember the correct footing, but then adapted to it as if it were second nature_._

Chad reciprocated the action with his own battle-ready stance, forming a fist with his pre-charged reiatsu.

Eerie.

Like a unnoticeable creeping shadow, an uneasy feeling beset the prevailing area. The constant current of the river went off a wavelength. The cardiac pumping of the wind skipped a beat as the breeze gradually, yet in abrupt intervals, changed direction. The unviewable clouds in the dark night sky seemed to convolute together as gargantuan fractures formed. That part of the sky itself seemed to clench together before ostensibly being pried open by what seemed to be nails, revealing blackness that contrasted even the night sky as three striking creatures appeared out of that void.

As briskly as it was opened, the holed nails pinched the seams of the rift, bringing it together and closing it. The portal slammed shut, revealing the full forms of the creatures. To the complete left, was one that was a little demure in size, yet also relatively tall in stature. It's tall, slim and toned form complimented it's feminine-esque, proportional shape. The creature was only visible from behind, yet one could clearly see blades shimmering off its body from the moonlight, lining the underside of its elbows and wrists. Acuminate blades could also be seen coming off its ankles after observing it's body down past it's apparent backward facing knees. It had a erect tail, budding off with two separate spikes at the end. A sort of snake-like neck could be seen on top of its shoulders with a head sporting forward facing blades of its own, but it was impossible to tell how many from the ground position.

To the complete right was a creature a little shorter in height yet just as fearsome looking as the bladed one to the left with only it's rigid body structure alone. From the ground-view from behind, two peculiar separate horns could be spotted sprouting from its head. They were formed by successively rising rings (larger to smaller, ending in a sharp point) that made the horns looks like exaggerated forms of antelopes or impala's horns. Lean muscle enveloped its entire frame to the point that, the contrasting of the muscles could be seen reflecting off the bridge lights. It didn't have a tail which sort of made it the odd one out among the three.

The middle beast was the smallest of the group, with not as intimidating of a figure. It's body a mix between and ectomorph, and mesomorph. But even by only viewing it from behind, it was obvious that this one was the most imposing of all. Its entire body was midnight black; ironically darker than the midnight sky itself which made it stand out. Pure undiluted obsidian. The contrast of its muscle tone was even more apparent than the horned creature, thanks to its nebulous shade. However, its muscles also appeared more lean thanks to it's small bone density and skeletal structure. Its tail was elongated, surpassing the length of its own body multiple times over with ease. The tail was atypical to say the least. It looked extremely vascular with multiple small tube-like structures compounded together side by side which made up the entire length of the tail. But, those very tubes together formed even larger tubes. All together, what looked like eight to nine 'greater tubes' combined to form a singular whole tail. The 'tubes' all had an edged top and bottom, that when all combined, made the tail into an elongated flexible blade.

Despite all these physical accolades, the thing that actually stood out most about all three of them was the gaping hole in each of their chests.

"Hollows? !" shouted Orihime running over to Chad's side. The hollows were standing up in the air behind where Chad had been facing Orihime just seconds earlier.

"Why did they appear here? Did our fighting draw them out?" asked Chad turning around raising his guard.

The hollows stood in the air further up above the entrance of the forest with their backs to Orihime and Chad. Eventually, they lowered down to the ground. Mumbles of a conversation could be heard before the smallest, middle hollow began turning its head all the way around without shifting it's body at all with its flexible neck at apparently sensing the two humans.

This action was only the first that unnerved Chad and Orihime even more. The chilling sweat on their bodies flowed between the valleys of their goose bump adorned skins.

It finished turning its head, allowing Orihime and Chad to see its intricate mask design sporting stokes of pure calligraphy where a mouth or at least mouth opening should be. A voice clearly came from it somehow despite a shocking lack of a mouth. The voice sounded like a hum of concentrated low frequency vibrations that reverberated through the air in the form of a deep voice. It echoed through the twilight of the oncoming dawn as it asked a simple question in that ethereal voice.

**"What do we have here?"**

* * *

><p>Sorry to ruin the mood, but it's time for a:<p>

**Omake/Side Story:** "Training with Hachi-sensei, part 1"

**A couple hours ago, yesterday night;**

"Alright Orihime-san, let's begin," said Hachi clapping his hands together.

"Hey woman, if this man really all that?" said Tsubaki out loud, yet acting as if he were saying it so only Orihime could hear.

"You ungrateful brat! This is the guy who brought you back!"

"'Brat'? Really? And if even if he brought me back, he should've made you disappear in return through some freakish sacrificial kidō or some crap like that. It is 'demon arts' after all. So far I'm not impressed," said an unfazed Tsubaki.

"There actually is sacrificial kidō-" began Hachi before he was swiftly cut off.

"Shut up, you two, we don't have time for that! Hachi-san is trying to teach us!"

"You're one to talk for once Lily," quipped Hinagiku realizing the irony.

"I just know when, and when not to joke around," said Lily turning her nose upright at not wanting to be associated with the two.

"So 'Miss Holier-than-thou', remind me again when you've ever actually made a 'joke'? I'd like to hear one," said Tsubaki referencing his disapproval of Lily's comedy in the makeshift contest they had before.

A dark aura surrounded Hachi, "Are we quite finished?" he asked with a smile that ensured death right in front of where Tsubaki was floating.

Apparently Hachi was a zero tolerance type of teacher.

"Eh? When did he get so close! Listen, I know basically being shaped like an oversized bubble yourself that you might not understand, but you're in _my _personal bubbl-!" he said before being grabbed by Orihime.

"Um…hehe…continue please…Hachi-sensei..," said Orihime sheepishly.

"Why of course! Hohohoho. Well..hmm, how should I start? Basically the creation of kidō is an ability shinigami use to focus their reiryoku or spiritual energy into a variety of what humans would call 'magic spells'. They can serve many purposes such as healing defense, or combat. I've already told you a lot about kidō already, so I won't bore you with redundant explanation, but you should know it is one of the four fundamental shinigami combat abilities. There's kidō or demon arts, along with hohō or agility, hakuda which is hand-to-hand combat and last but not least, zanjutsu which I've already talked about,"

Hachi then went on to further explain kidō, showing and performing examples for each one. He explained to her about hado, and bakudo, and all the different possible uses for those two types of spells (barriers, seals, restriction, blocking, repeling, and freezing in place all for bakudo, with various offensive attacks for hado). Then he went on to explain what he hadn't talked about before; the sub-types of hado and bakudo which were 'Forbidden Kidō', and the aforementioned 'Sacrificial Kidō'. Then he went to the classes of incantation; Eishōhaki (詠唱破棄) or 'Incantation Abandonment' which allows a user to use the spell without saying the incantation at the cost of a weaker spell. Though, a weaker user who tries this might have the spell utterly fail.

"That's like how I can do my techniques without my kotodama!" exclaimed Orihime, "but I never had any problems like how you said with kidō exploding in my face or anything, it just took a while to master…" said Orihime.

Hachi affirmed her connection as he continued explaining and demonstrating the next classes of incantation.

Kōjutsu Eishō (後述詠唱) or 'Spoken-After incantation', which was basically a 'delayed incantation,' with saying the incantation after initiating the spell to power it up.

**"You can use this; since you say you can use your techniques without kotodama, to power them up catching enemies by surprise,"** explained Hachi.

The last class he explained was Nijū Eishō (二重詠唱), or 'Twofold Incantaion'. Basically mixing two completely separate incantations together to save time and confuse the opponents.

"Besides these three, there are tons of different classes, and some people even create their own custom incantation styles, but these are the standardized ones taught at the academy," explained Hachi.

"Though like I said, I would like to teach you to develop your own kidō, instead of the monotonous way the academy teaches it, but for now let's get started on the fundamentals of kidō itself. First, bringing out your reiryoku. You say you've had experience with an object known as a 'Reishūkaku' correct?"

Orihime nodded her head.

_"So the Shiba are still around after all? I'd heard so much about their misfortune from Yoruichi-san," _thought Hachi.

"That object helps one channel their reiryoku, so it can produce a physical manifestation of it, being reiatsu by definition, in the form of a sort of ball. Consider that like 'training wheels' for kidō. After all, did you see all the spells I just demonstrated? One must learn to manipulate their reiryoku into the various shapes and forms of all the kidō spells. Doing that without some sort of object is the true challenge.

Your three techniques automatically do this feat by themselves, as a zanpakutō's technique does, but now you must learn to do this yourself. This is what both shinigami and now you must learn. Are you ready?"

At this Tsubaki got loose.

"You're way too chatty. Worse than the woman! We were ready when you said 'Let's begin'!"

**Continued in part 2  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

**Chapter Started: Sep 23, 9:51 AM est**  
><strong>Chapter Finished: Oct 23, 7:17 PM est<strong>  
><strong>Revisions: Nov 6, 6:55 PM-Nov 19, 8:59 AM est<strong>

*Yes I use every little detail. Or do you all not remember the chapter and episode where Orihime and Tatsuki said how they always went to that place by the Onose River to see the Autumn trees and the red dragonflies that Orihime's brother Sora always used to catch for her? And then they reminisce how Orihime in her absentmindedness once got comically washed away in the river all the way to Yokohama City(a city I've actually been to in real life), which freaked Tatsuki out. Did you also forget Orihime learned karate from Tatsuki? I feel it's nice to to still use actual canon elements and details of the story even though this chapter is the first of the AU chapters. It all fit it perfectly, so I added it in.

I decided to publish this a little early. This is the first technically full AU chapter. I know this chapter might be wordy, but I think around the end of this chapter I got the hang of writing full AU, as the pace picked up. You can tell by the dates above that I had trouble writing this. The perspective writing was hard this chapter. Before I was writing one character's perspective at a time, or third-person limited perspective. Now, I'm having to do a mixture of third-person omniscient/limited with a touch of first-person. Third-person omniscient should be easy by itself, but it's hard to transition into that along with all the other factors I just mentioned, so the wording in this chapter might be strange because of this. I think I have it under control for chapter eight though.

I hope you liked my references to canon chapters in the subtitles of this chapter. Remember the actual manga chapter called 'Chasing Chad'? Ring a bell?

Pay attention to everything. Things are picking up plot-wise. This and chapter eight function as the two-part prologue to the main arc(thus the 'prelude' in the chapter title). The main arc starts in chapter nine.

**Chaps 1-8: Expository Arc: 'Acquisition of Unwavering Resolve'**  
><strong>Chaps 9-?: Main Arc made out of multiple mini-arcs: <span>(Name of the arc and mini-arcs to be revealed when the time comes<span>)**

I bet none of you expected any kind of fighting this chapter. Has Orihime's attitude caught you off guard any? If so, then I blame myself.

Also, everything Orihime learned from Hachi will be further explained and developed, as well as whatever it was that Chad hinted he had up his sleeves. But, if you really have any questions, feel free to message me, but **preferably **leave it in a review.

The Reishūkaku ball that Orihime and co. used back at the Shiba's in Soul Society, along with the thing Yoruichi used to help Ichigo materialize Zangetsu, are both examples of objects that can be used and augmented with spiritual power or reiryoku. These types of objects will hopefully be touched on later in the story...

I hope Hachi gave a good example of how using those objects are like 'training wheels' as far as mastering the manipulation of one's reiryoku is concerned.

Other examples include the the Shiba's firework canon that works in conjunction with kidō itself, then the device Yoruichi gave Ichigo, allowing him to fly to the hill of Rukia's impending execution.

Kidō, and the spiritual technology of Bleach really has lots of unexplored applications. Applications I hope to explore.

Next time, coming around the end of December _or earlier_ to a computer screen near you, a true test of strength! Stay tuned for next chapter and the CONCLUSION of this arc!: **Prelude to Destiny 2: Ascension to Hell  
>Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.<strong>


	8. Prelude to Destiny 2: Ascension to Hell

Pre-chapter notes:

-Author's Note at bottom as always. I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does (because if I owned it, it would have even more plotkai. Just sayin'). EDIT: Omake/Side story added on Jan 1, 2012

-This is the last chapter of the Expository Arc(I call it the Unwavering Resolve arc). In essence, the climax. The name of the next arc will be revealed along with the next chapter. More info on said arc is in the Author's Note. Now for the fun part. Personally I feel like something is missing from this chapter(*gets shot by angry readers*). Just that something is off about this chapter...oh wait..I know.

-You might not feel the same about that, but there will definitely be revisions because I have OCD that way. But I had to get this chapter out like I promised since it was already overdue(*gets stabbed this time*). I truly wish I could write faster, and that I had all the time in the world to do so, but life gets in the way. Stupid life. Oh wait, that came out wrong. o_0

-Update(12/31/11): Oh yeah, some of the Japanese characters for the attack names weren't showing up because the website is basically banning all symbols for no reason(aka for lulz). So because of that, there were a bunch of empty parenthesis and large blank gaps(they even moved where the gaps would normally be), so I am **removing **the Japanese characters. Whenever the site wants to have common sense, and it allows characters to be shown again, I have them on reserve to be added in. Until then, they're axed from the story from this point on. Reviewers have helped me make this decision. The large white gaps were simply distracting. I also formatted the story with horizontal line rules to make it easier to read. I will continue spelling out the Japanese in english through 'Romaji' however. Only kanji is being axed.

-I'm really beginning to dislike the site's formatting. After uploading, it adds so many mistakes that weren't there before, and in a chapter this big, I'll never find them all.

-Currently Unbeta'd _and_ unrevised. Grammar scholars who are faint of heart, turn back now until I revise it. I haven't even checked and I know there's some stuff in here that'll make you faint.

-Update(12/28/12): I've noticed over the past few months, Kanji and Japanese characters are showing back up in stories again. I'm glad the site has added them back in. Edit: I take that back. They only show up in the Document Manager, but not when you actually publish the chapter. So now I'm taking the characters back out again.

**Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc****.** That is all. Enjoy...I hope.

* * *

><p>Prelude to Destiny 2: Ascension to Hell<p>

(This chapter is best read directly after the ending of the previous chapter)  
>-<p>

**September 10th  
>12:26 A.M. In a town south of Karakura. Unexpected interruption. Inevitable confrontation.<strong>

**Forecast: Overcast**  
>The morning was calm.<p>

Three hollows appeared out of a Kūmon created by what seemed to have been a Menos Grande as it carefully pried apart the cracked sky with its long nails. As soon as the Kūmon had opened, it was closed as the holed nails pinched the seams of the sky, bringing it together like elegant drapery, causing spatial ripples in the sky.

"Hmm? Where is this cesspool supposed to be?' asked a horned hollow out of genuine curiosity. Its mid tenor/alto voice presenting obvious disdain. It was the tallest and most 'built' looking of the three. Lean muscle enveloped his rigid body frame. His mask had a sort of ripple pattern, starting with a small circle above his top row of teeth and spreading out from there on all sides, eventually molding to the shape of the edge of his mask which was also outlined by the markings.

"Huh? Was that question really just asked?" asked the hollow to the left with blades coming off its body in multiple areas; its feminine voice rising with a tinge of anger. "Didn't you look at the mission specs? That's your job! Pft, you're already screwing up, and in record time too," she finished, eyes closed in irritation.

Her semi-scaly skin seemed borderline transparent with a green undertone as if a few layers of epidermis were translucent on top of the remaining layers. Similar to the opaque skin on one's palms and fingertips in particular. This formed a sort of silhouette effect.

The same horned hollow to the right responded at this, "Whose job? And who wants to look at those manufactured instructions? It's such a bore. If you wanted to know so bad then you should have looked at them yourself. Manufactured things should fit well with someone like you."

Finally the obsidian lead hollow in the middle of the two decided to act as mediator, the elongated tail arcing around his body in multiple circles. As amusing he thought his partner's 'heated discussions' were, now was not the time.

"We're all on this mission, so we should all look at the mission specifications before coming. I take personal responsibility for not knowing where we are,"

"Tch. Whatever," said the horned hollow looking around. "Anyway, looks like those faliures at Dispatch messed up yet again. I don't sense anything for kilometers."

"Hmm, and exactly what logic is that? Just what exactly are we supposed to sense? This is the mortal world after all. Humans are pretty dry in the spiritual pressure department. Let's just get on ground level to survey our surroundings and possibly do _pesquisa _before deciding what to do next. We don't really need mission 'specs' anyway since our general job hasn't changed," answered the lead hollow as it lowered down to the ground with the other two in tow.

The horned hollow began speaking again with smugness dripping out his voice, "Heh, even so, why didn't we get sent to a really big city. I mean if they _really _want this job done, they would send us to high population areas. You know, a place with more than a dozen people per square kilometer-I wonder-"

"Are you purposely a moron? Wait-don't answer that," spoke the bladed hollow interrupting its teammate. "The Shinigami have big cities on practical lock down. Look around! We're already in a freakin' metropolis already. We're lucky as it is that the Kūmon wasn't detected, so we don't need to go around begging to get noticed like a group of attention whores waving neon 'suspicious activity' banners. Idiot."

"You're really impossible, you know that? Are you purposely trying to be a mindless tool? So much that you can't even recognize a joke? That's why I hate being around your 'type'. Sometimes I feel that Aloban and I are the only ones with a truly refined sense of humor anyway," finished the horned hollow referencing the dark hollow to his left.

"Sense of humor? More like sense of stupor. There was nothing funny at all about what you said. The both of you are clowns. Aloban's seems mature, but it's all an act and he's really an undercover clown, but you're just one by your natural personality."

"That's Aloban and I alright. Idiots by affinity," responded the horned hollow ambiguously, choosing to end the dispute. He wasn't going to let this women get under his mask so early in the run of things.

"Oh? You two actually finished a discussion without bickering for two and a half hours straight," observed Aloban casually only to be met with unamused grumbles from the other two. Both of them may not admit it, and it might not seem like it at all, but they respected their leader enough to acknowledge his authority...in certain situations at least.

A slight twinkle could be seen in his piercing golden eyes. It was what the only indicator of what could be seen as amusement, or any emotion at all for that matter, as his eye sockets were the only outstanding feature on his mask. There oddly was no mouth opening or rows of teeth at all to be seen. The markings on his mask however were exquisite to say the least. Symmetrical noisy calligraphic markings and designs covered his mask in entirety, leaving only sparse white mask material. A rarity among hollow mask designs indeed. It did much to contrast against his ash colored body.

They all finished floating down and touched the ground.

"Anywa-," he began before getting hit with a wave of intense spiritual pressure. His teammates immediately span around in shock, their eyes widening in panic.

Aloban was admittedly caught off guard, yet he slowly turned his head around, twisting his neck in a 360 degree motion without moving his body at all. He dragged out the motion to get as much pleasurable adrenaline as possible before answering his suspense by allowing himself to see the source of the robust spiritual pressure. He lived for the mystery of the panic. Exhisting for thrill.

"What do we have here?" he asked at finally seeing the new spectacle and then turning the rest of his body around.

The other two hollows were already ahead of the game at taking in Orihime and Chad's powerful presences.

But now that they all had turned around, the two humans could finally get a better view of the party of hollows compared to when they had their back turned to them when first coming out of the Kūmon. The body language of the onyx colored hollow demanded authority so he was apparently the leader. It wasn't a baseless assumption either seeing as his spiritual pressure was higher than his companions(and he was the first to speak). To the left of him was the horned hollow who was shade of a grayish thundercloud. The bladed hollow to the right of the leader was a contrast to the other two color-wise, appearing a darker variant of forest green.

They were still pretty far away the two to see intricate details, yet they were conveniently talking loud enough for them to hear. Talking as if Chad and Orihime weren't standing right in front of them by the way, much to the two human's chagrin.

"H-Humans? It's coming from both of them! H-How can humans put out that much spiritual pressure? !" exclaimed the bladed hollow in a mixture of dominantly confusion and a hint of fear before her eyes narrowed into a harsh squint(AKA the scowl of the century) "Tch! And they're even looking right at us like they can _see _us or something!" she finished.

The horned hollow took his surprise in stride, yet was still wide eyed. Not being as overtly emotional as his partner.

"Heh. Looks like those fools at Dispatch had the right general idea after all. Even so, I'm sure _this_ specifically is a total coincidence." His expression slowly creeped into a smile as the wheels in his head began turning.

"Hey listen, they're saying something!" responded the bladed hollow as they all listened in.

"Sado-kun, they all turned around. What should we do?"

_"So they see us after all,"_ thought Aloban. With his previous suspicions then being confirmed and he himself feeling pretty smugly secure as a result, he was woefully caught off-guard from the following conversation.

"Why did hollows have to come now? This is throwing me off big time," complained Orihime in a comically scrunched up face(AKA, Orihime's version of a pout. It's definitely not on scowl-level though).

_"It sounds bad, but truthfully I was hoping they didn't notice us," _she thought.

"Hm. Should we just ignore them and continue?" asked Chad completely stone-faced, yet anybody who knew him well enough could _almost _tell he was actually joking. Almost.

Orihime's face returned serious before responding. "No Sado-kun. If hollows came here, they probably want to eat human souls or at least cause some trouble. They were most likely attracted to Karakura since it's the juureichi, but they're a little off though if that's where they wanted to go...," she said trailing off, tapping her index finger on her lips in thought.

"Either way, let's just scare them off, or kill them or something so we can get back to training with no more useless interruptions," responded Chad cracking his knuckles. Probably a little miffed that Orihime missed that he was just joking, but we'll never know.

The hollow triad were beside themselves at hearing this exchange. Humans had not only sensed _and_ saw them, but had high reiatsu, and at actually _seeing _said group of hollows, practically dismissed them as mere distractions. Useless distractions at that. To say they had no idea what was going on was an understatement. Just put yourself in their shoes. And to make matters worse, Orihime and Chad were still carrying on a casual conversation as if the hollows couldn't obviously hear them. These humans didn't seem the least bit threatened, despite clearly hearing that the hollows had just been talking about them. In fact, they actually seemed more annoyed than scared or threatened.

As they gained the ability to process the scene more and more, veins pulsed on the bladed hollow's face. "W-what the?" she sputtered drawing a blank, while the horned now sported just a jaded expression,

Aloban showed more intrigue than shock(however that was possible with his lack of a mouth).

"Hey now, calm down you two. If anything, after what we've just heard, these two are definitely our main targets tonight, but don't run off like hasty children. Let's get this over wit-," he began before feeling incredible bursts of reiatsu on either sides of him.

Before he could even realize what happened, his partners had been blasted into the forest causing two large audible impacts, and one explosion.

"_They even have some sort of spiritual powers!" _thought Aloban not in shock or confusion, but what almost could be classified as glee.

Chad and Orihime had fired dual attacks at the two hollows. Orihime fired a Santen Kesshun augmented by an incantation-less **Sh****ō** at the bladed hollow, and Chad a direct reiatsu blast to the mask of the horned one.

"You know," began Chad lowering his arm back to his side. "I was getting kind of upset that you all were talking about us like we weren't even standing right in front of you. You said you wanted to 'get this over with'. We'd be happy to help you out with that," said Chad appearing to the hollow's right holding his armored arm. Orihime stayed back in her original position with her arms folded, listening to her friend's psuedo-speech.

"Normally I'm not this direct, and I'd probably tell you something like 'please go back where you came from' so nobody has to get hurt. I'm not really a person that's eager to fight. But referring to us as '_main targets_,' changes everything. That means not only do you want to _specifically _attack us, but hurt other innocents too. Now we have no choice but to fight. Whoever you are," he said, charging up reiatsu in a quite visible display.

A quiet pause almost turned into silence before it was interrupted.

"You know Sado-kun, you're really starting to sound like Ishida-kun. Have you two been secretly hanging out?" questioned Orihime harmlessly without even a hint of humor or a smile. That particular comment destroyed all the confident composure Chad had built up and his visible reiatsu coming off his arm even went haywire for more than a few seconds.

"Oh you noticed that too?" remarked an amused Shun'ō to Orihime. He along with Ayame had been summoned right at the moment of her attack on the bladed hollow so as not to draw attention to themselves in the bright light caused by the summoning. They now were somehow hiding in her hair. Without the hairpins parting her it, her hair was unrestrained and flowing with the wind.

However Aloban seemed unaffected by both Chad's declaration, and the boy's body language that signaled impending attack.

"Hmm. 'Talking as if we weren't standing right in front of you?' That's quite the humorous statement child. Seeing as you and the girl were doing the exact same just earlier," he retorted. His eyes scanning over them as if they were test subjects.

"Yet still, what fascinating humans! Self-righteous, yet extraordinary nonetheless! With both of your heads under my belt, who knows what will happen? This must be the biggest discovery yet!" he shouted. The balling of his fists being the only indicator of his excitement.

"I don't know how much you're aware of, but don't worry, we won't eat you. That' not our call anyway, It's just that there's something much better in store, that it would be a waste to eat in your present meager states."

Before Aloban had even finished his statements, Orihime began preparing an incantation-less Koten Zashun while Chad swung back his arm preparing to fire a blast. They attacked in unison, their attacks coalescing into one since they were both aiming at the same target. This lead to Tsubaki spearheading Chad's energy blast as he flew towards his destination.

"Hmph," said the hollow wiping its tail to attention. It began violently vibrating before slamming into the attack as a sound echoed out that seemed to be coming and bouncing back in forth in an omnidirectional manner. Both high, and low 'demonic' sounding pitches could be heard as the attack completely collided into the tail. The blast then began flickering exactly like a light-bulb before dissipating into nothingness. Tsubaki was sent careening into the dark morning sky, but the hollow failed to notice.

With this, he took a step up, and made quaint motions as if he were dusting off his shoulder.

"How crude of me, I must apologize for making you so upset, I've been so unintentionally rude. So allow me to introduce myself," he began mockingly in his deep, ethereal, and borderline disembodied voice.

Raising his palm to his chest he said, "My name is Aloban Vibrerra. But, I don't personally care who you are. I just want _you_ both now to tell _me_," he continued, moving his over-sized tail in front of him. "What exactly _was _that?" he asked referencing the failed attack on him. If his mask had a mouth he would be sporting a triumphant smile right then. Although he personally wasn't snooty, he definitely gave off that kind of 'elitist older gentlemen' vibe.

"That's our line! What happened to our attack? It just...died," said Shun'ō at a loss for words.  
>"I hope Tsubaki wasn't hurt too bad, it feels like he's okay..." said Ayame trailing off at the end with worry.<p>

"In all seriousness though, I'm genuinely curious now. I'm wondering just what makes you two tick," he said crouching, and positioning himself as if he were preparing to engage the two humans by jumping at them.

Orihime unlike her Rikka, surprisingly looked unfazed at this development.

"Sado-kun. I figured it out. His weird voice is coming from his tail, not from a mouth behind his mask. So are all those other noises."

Chad grunted at this in affirmation before deciding to actually respond for once.

Yet, "Figured as much," was all he had to say said before charging up another blast, his eyes narrowing, studying his target.

_"Its tail seems to be vibrating extremely fast until it looks like it's in different places at once. It's like some kind of afterimage blur surrounding it or something...He must be using those vibrations to talk, since his voice isn't coming from his mouth. Now that I think about it, aren't speech and sound are just vibrations anyway. His tail is basically like giant vocal chords! It even looks like something that is supposed to be inside the body. How bizarre…..Even so, that attack should have injured him at least if I go by the reiatsu he's putting out. What exactly is this guy's ability?..."_

_"Are these two mad? !" _thought the Aloban as he lost his previous bearing and poise, his eyes widening in surprise that they were actually engaging him once more.

"TSUBAKI!" shouted Orihime, re-summoning the wayward Rikka in the way she had learned to 're-summon' Ayame and Shun'ō two nights prior. A mini-tempest of reiatsu could be seen fluctuating around her her. Similar to when she did this against Yammy.

Tsubaki came back in a flicker of light into Orihime's pre-outstretched hands.

"Koten Zanshun!" she shouted. At this Tsubaki, in Orihime's outstretched arms, convulsed in an outpouring of light. This time, much brighter than ever before.

"I Reject!" she finished as Chad fired his blast at a stronger power level this time. They once again formed a combined blast as Tusbaki flew into it to spearhead it. This time better fusing to bring out the most power as the newly formed attack fluctuated; as if in mutual agreement between Chad and Orihime.

To say the obsidian creature _finally _felt the emotion of shock that night was an understatement. He barely had time to even think about dodging the now extremely faster attack before the explosion happened right in front of him.

Orihime and Chad watched the explosion with muted expressions. Orihime raised up her now violently shaking hands and looked at them in confusion, turning to Chad.

"Something definitely felt wrong just now with firing Tsubaki," said Orihime with a worry evident in her voice.

The multinational teen was however still engrossed in the explosion, and answered without turning towards her.

"Hm? Just call him back then Inoue. The attack worked fine. He was much stronger because you said your 'kotodama' right?"

"B-But, I can't even sense Santen Kesshun anymore, let alone Baigon, Hinagiku, and Lily's individual presences...," said looking down, clutching her abdomen area with a pained expression. When Tsubaki was destroyed by Yammy, she had an empty feeling. Now that feeling had been brought back exponentially, and it gave a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"! ? ! ?" was the expression on Chad's face as he snapped out of his engrossment with the explosion and looked at his friend with confusion and a tinge of worry.

"But how is that even possible?" he asked before his head jerked back to the sight of the explosion.

"Hm. Speaking of something feeling wrong," he said cuing Orihime to look where he was looking as well.

The smoke cleared to reveal three forms where there was once only one.

It was the two hollows from earlier that Orihime and Chad had blown into the forest. But there was definitely something different about them.

"Hahhh! Hahh~. Hahhh~!," panted the two hollows overlapping each other almost as if in a complex chant, but anyone with eyes could see the underlying reason.

"Hmph," remarked the obsidian Aloban with a smug tone. Ferenan, Fátima, you two are quite tardy. Just what do you two think you were doing napping in the forest from those weak attacks. And one of them wasn't even an attack," he said looking at the bladed hollow who he had addressed as Fátima.

Both Fátima and Ferenan were variously injured from Orihime and Chad's dual attack. Both of them reprised their positions at the right and left of Aloban respectively.

_"They shielded him from the attack? Wait-when did they even get in front of him?"_ thought Orihime.  
><em>"They're fast. The one we attacked probably would have dodged anyway if the other two are anything to go by," <em>thought Chad grimly.

Fátima originally only had various scratches on her from being impacted by the virtual wall that was Santen Kesshun. The pure horizontal G-force of its already incredible speed, augmented with an incantation-less Shō for additional speed and power did less to help her case. If anything, she really had been 'napping' from the blunt force of her head being sandwiched in between Santen Kesshun and the trees of the forest during her slamming into the them. Even if the blades on her head had cut each one as impacted them. Even so, taking the recent combined attack of Orihime and Chad left her completely limbless at the shoulder as far as her left arm was concerned. Her outer layer of skin also highly fringed.

The towering hollow Ferenan, definitely fared no better, initially taking a full powered blast from Chad. A blast of such intensity that, it had at times punched entire sides off of hollows. Namely the first hollow he had killed when protecting Ichigo's little sister Karin. Ferenan sported what looked like first, second, and a third degree burns all over his grayscale body from the explosion. The latter level of extremity only around his hollow hole in his chest, being actually the epicenter of where the blast hit. From the second more recent attack, his right shoulder had been chipped at the top all the way down to his scapula in one area(thanks to Tsubaki) along with even more burn-like injuries from Chad's portion of the attack.

Blood coated, and was dripping from them both.

Both were still struggling with all their might to comprehend that humans were actually contesting hollows. It was like everything they knew was a lie. Hollows were the predators, and humans the prey. Yet to these hollows the example was even more extreme. Seeing as normal humans had absolutely no chance of ever fighting off a hollow or even knowing of their existence, they were basically as helpless as grass is to cows. Just think about that for a second. The scene that had just played out was the equivalent of grass fighting back against a cow, creating burn-like injuries on it and cutting off one of it's limbs. And yet here the hollows were, injured in that exact way by mere humans. Reality was falling apart, and it's falling shards were goring the hollows in their masks.

"Tch, SHUT UP Aloban!, and stay out of my way! That goes for you too Ferenan! It's the girl's reiatsu that cut off my arm just now so she's _mine_," she said before turning towards Orihime making a balled fist with her right hand, while having no left hand or even arm for that matter to speak of.

"Hey! Hey girl! Hahhh!" she panted as if out of breath. What do you think you're doing attacking that disproportionate freak!(referring to Aloban's tail) You are mine and mine alone! Don't ever think of doing anything like that again!"

"Eh-?" asked Orihime innocently, wide-eyed before her thoughts were interrupted by another voice. Ferenan had quickly jumped in on his teammates tirade.

"Ha. You claim her as if she's some sort of lofty prize. It's really because you were weak enough to get beaten by something that wasn't even an attack and then had the nerve to come back and get your arm cut off that your twisted superiority complex kicked in. Now you probably feel she should consider herself lucky to be worthy of your so called 'selection'. But really deep down, you're ashamed of being so caught off guard by her techniques. Oh~~, but I _do_ acquiesce. Oh I'm _sooo _disappointed that _I_ can't fight the girl, but then again it's only natural that the females get paired up," Ferenan's voice dripped with mockery causing more than one or two furious growls from the teammate on the receiving end of his words.

"How was that? Can you guess who my impression was of near the end there?," asked Ferenan to Fátima who refused to even look at him.

"Oh, do tell," requested an amused Aloban; flattered even though Ferenan was imitating him negatively.

_"These hollows aren't serious at all,"_ thought Orihime. She was thinking about how to attack them, but they were basically in a standoff at the moment that always happens when each party is waiting for the other to make the first move.

"Oh, was it that easy to figure out? I must be getting better after all. At least you know how to laugh at yourself old man," said Ferenan before turning to Chad, which got his attention.

"Either way," the hollow continued, getting serious as he managed to clench his palms despite his injuries. "My target was obvious from the start," he finished as he started exhuming reiatsu.

To Chad's surprise in particular, his fresh burn-looking injuries and cleaved shoulder, began pulsating as if in tune with the beat of a heart, before glowing and a strange liquid began being secreted from his wounds. The light grey liquid became infused in what looked like transparent exposed veins as the "burns" turned into scar tissue, and then completely healing over. The intense speed of the process producing visible "reiatsu-steam".

_"Regeneration, and it's fast!" _thought Chad, clenching his teeth in annoyance, before he noticed Orihime's shocked expression and looked at the girl's self-proclaimed 'owner'. Apparently she had regenerated as well through some process analogous to Ferenan, but in the end there were three positively squeaky-clean hollows ready for battle, as Orihime and Chad raised their guard in retaliation.

"Awww, how cute, she's ready to fight. This is going to be so nice," said Fátima licking her beak in anticipation before her head abruptly snapped back towards her horned teammate, breaking the building tension.

"Oh, and Feranan! I told you already to quit analyzing my every action like you're some kind of wannabe crack psycologist! Plus all that crap that came out your mouth was coming from a guy who looked like a giant wax candle before he regenerated! What was up with all those burns huh? !

Ferenan wisely chose to _unsubtlely _ignore this comment, further ticking off the scaled hollow before turning to Chad.

"Human!" shouted Ferenan at Chad, getting his attention. "Allow me to introduce you to the infinite power of hollows!"

"Spare me the introduction," mumbled Chad under his breath, yet loud enough for everyone to hear.

"He's the one who has the 'superiority complex'," whispered Ayame referring to the prideful hollow.

"Um..heh..Ayame, I 'm thinking all three of those guys have that actually. Oh wait, one of them is female...but anyway it's to be expected. It's hollows versus humans. If they can't even have pride, and against humans at that, then what else do they have going for them? But they've come up against the wrong humans if they're just looking to kill some to boost their egos," remarked Shun'ō.

Chad however had something else on his mind._ "These hollows...I thought they had some 'noble' reason for taking our attack to protect their leader, but instead they just wanted to claim Inoue and I completely to themselves. They didn't want their leader to have any possible 'claim' on us. What kind of twisted prideful possessiveness is that? Not to mention their team dynamic is so warped...And some of them have serious individual issues of their own to work out," _concluded Chad_._

Right then Aloban began speaking through his ethereal voice.

"Um...yeah...ahem..yeah, Ferenan, Fátima, I'm terribly _not_ sorry to interrupt your excitement, but remember not to injure them too much...or kill them...oh yes, and neither of the humans are—and it's quite funny because I do quote you both on this one—'mine' or your personal 'target'. Unquote. Instead they are '_ours'_," he stated in an pleased tone.

"Hmm. Am I the only one that's loving that you left 'don't eat them' out of that buzz-kill of yours? Not to mention all this same garbage is coming from the guy who said he would be happy to have those 'fascinating humans under _my _belt'. That's right. Thought we couldn't hear it in the forest didn't you? Hypocritical much?" asked Ferenan to a now somehow visibly undelighted Aloban.

"One; obnoxious much, boy?" he half-growled, stoicism returning in his eyes before he continued. "Two; well then brand me a hypocrite, I could care less. Three; eating is killing. And four; how it pleases me so, to hear you weren't napping on the job after all during your little field trip in the forest," he finished. With this a lot more back and forth between the two ensued.

At this point Chad was thoroughly annoyed. Once again these hollows were bantering like they weren't even there, along with actually making full battle and spoils of war plans right in front of their faces. Obviously they hadn't learned their lessons the first time they got smashed into the forest. Chad was currently planning to introduce them to the concept of 'repetitive learning'. Not to mention that this was the third time in the past couple of hours that this personally has happened to him.

"Oh yeah, I just remembered," purposely interrupted Fátima in forced monotone, yet speaking loud enough to intentionally stop the petty conversation between both her partners(something neither of them failed to notice).

"Before we start little girl," she began again, getting Orihime's attention.

_"Little girl? Her voice doesn't even make her sound much older than me..,"_ thought Orihime mildly sweatdropping, yet on the apprehensive at the same time.

"I forgot that you seem to be missing THIS!" shouted Fátima suddenly whipping her spiked tail from behind her revealing an impaled, extremely damaged and shrunken Santen Kesshun. In fact, it had gotten to the point that the three Rikka had been around her tail as if it were a triangular ring. The speed of her tail forced Santen Kesshun off of it as it went flying towards the face of Orihime, who quickly dispelled it right before impact.

Fátima took notice of that specific action.

"Carrying that thing around was starting to be bothersome. It's way too noisy," she said referencing the light whirring sound Santen Kesshun and Sōten Kisshun both produced. Baigon, Hinagiku, and Lily, began making to fly back into hairpins, flickering much more violently than usual.

"You guys! What happened, what's wr-!" she shouted before a tall blur appeared behind her.

She quickly snapped her head around, turning directly into a side-punch to her profile; the same spot Chad had punched her earlier. The force sent her tumbling under the beginning of the nearby bridge where it started to go over the river.

"Inoue!" shouted Chad, making to actually run past Fátima over to Orihime.

"You're blind," she stated cryptically to him as she disappeared in a burst of sound.

Immediately Chad caught on as he instantly pivoted around to block an extremely powerful stab, using his forearm as a shield. The projectile had slightly pierced through his armor.

It was at that moment, he realized what had happened. Ferenan had literally launched his barbed toungue from his mouth with such momentum that it had been able to slightly impale his arm at the point where his armor fanned out into two separate sections above his shoulder. The tongue had managed to lodge itself right in the middle of those two extensions. It was rapidly secreting what Chad thought was saliva as he quickly made to grab the toungue and rip it out of his arm by force, but was unexpectedly interrupted.

**"Ii tTHhoOuUgGHhtT iI mMAaddEe IitT qQUuite cCLlear tThaAt I AM YyoUur oOppoNneEnNTt hHuMmaan!"(Translation: "I thought I made it quite clear that I am your opponent human!")**

The ambiguous voice was clearly Ferenan's and was coming from his tongue. But, the sloppy overlapping vibration of the sound of his voice resonated throughout Chad's body, ricocheting throughout his bones and nerves, which made his words hard to understand. Even with Chad's then dull senses, he was sure he felt his energy being siphoned, but he couldn't do anything about it in his daze. He actually wasn't even sure what he felt at that point.

Effectively paralyzed for the moment, Ferenan retracted his tongue out of Chad's shoulder(raking up blood in the process) and wrapped it around Chad's right arm, using the wing-like protrusions coming off his forearm as leverage. He gripped them with his tongue before using it to pick Chad up and swing him through the air across the night sky, and slamming him down in the nearby forest floor.

Ferenan then finished retracting his tongue like a tape measure before disappearing in his own burst of sound with primal eagerness at continuing his assault on his opponent.

Aloban watched on in interest in the middle of the two newly formed battlefields.

_"Hmm, this should prove to be quite the entertainment. Don't want to miss a second of it now do I?" _ he thought, crossing his arms as he rose into the the sky, looking down on both fights. Body language, and speaking were the only way for him to convey emotion. Even the eye sockets of his mask were pretty neutral looking as far as emotional interpretation goes. So what was his body language trying to convey at the moment? Was it anxiety?

He took a particular initial interest in how quickly Fátima's battle was going.

Just moments earlier, Orihime had just managed to regain her footing, only to barely raise a reformed kotodama-less Santen Kesshun to block an attack in her blind spot from Fátima's bladed elbow.(the Rikka flew over after she got hit just in time) Surely to be hit by such a thing with such force would split her open. Upon contact, her blade actually sliced through Santen Kesshun. It was such a precise cut, that it cut through like a surgical incision, miraculously without causing any stress fractures within the shield at all.

Immediately, Orihime had Santen Kesshun burst from it's current position straight to the bottom of the bridge, but Fátima dislodged herself from her target-turned-trap right before impact, flipping away and landing down on the ground with a gymnast level dismount. She was now facing Orihime directly.

Dispelling Santen Kesshun, yet keeping the Rikka active, Orihime turned her full attention on her opponent.

"_Santen Kesshun seems fine now, but earlier, I couldn't even sense it. Let alone Baigon, Hinagiku and Lily. Then she threw it at me with her tail and it had gotten so much smaller and broken. When they came back they were flickering like crazy. Not to mention what happened with Tsubaki after he was hit by that other hollow's tail. But he seems fine now too after I used him again,_" she thought, sensing Tusbaki's presence. "_Still though, what exactly is going on...! ?_"

Even this early in the morning, cars could be heard overhead on the bridge. Being so close to the hollow, Orihime could finally see her up close in all her detail.

Fátima was tall compared to Orihime of course with her only being human. The girl only came up to about the middle area of Fátima's torso, so she was abnormally smaller than most hollows which were usually much, much larger. Her undertone of skin was a darker shade of forest green. Though while her undertone was that shade, the outer layers of leathery scale-like skin were more opaque and only took on the pigment level of a tint of the undertone versus a shade of it. This created the aforementioned surreal silhouette around her body.

And that was just the beginning. What made her seem 'tall' despite her being shorter than an "average" hollow was her long limbs. This was emphasized by her slender yet proportionate figure. Her entire body had not bulky, but lean and taut muscle. But the keynote of her body without a doubt had to be the multiple blades there were spawned off her limbs in various places. Two each coming off her forearms, one from each of her wrists, one right at the end of her humerus where her elbows start, and two off the back of each of her heels/ankles. In addition to all of that were forward facing blades on her forehead and atop her head which sat on her snake-like neck. There were only of two of them, and as you went down her face, they ended once you got to her beak which looked to be made of the same material as the blades. All these blades matched her skin undertone color wise with a complimentary darker blackish green. The beak made up part of her white mask which was marked in its entirety with appropriate scale-like designs/markings in the same green color as the blades. Yellow eyes shined through her eye-holes.

Topping this all off were her long legs with knees that face backwards, ending in theropod feet with three clawed toes each. Three clawed fingers and opposable thumbs on each hand, and a moderately sized thick bean-pod looking tail that budded off into two elongated sharp bullet sized spikes by the time you reached it's end; the latter spike being the tip of the tail, the former coming off the middle as if still growing.

In these brief seconds, Orihime wasn't the only one doing some observation.

_"What's with this girl's powers?"_ thought Fátima squinting her eyes. _"They're flying really fast, but I clearly see those little weird things flying around her. 'The heck are they supposed to be? She made them into that wall of energy earlier, and then made it disappear, but they're still flying...Hmm?"_

Fátima noticed Orihime's smothering of her with her eyes before smirking only the way a one with a beak could, unexpectedly revealing an acute set of teeth.

"What's with that look girl? Do you like what you see or something?"

Orihime had never really gotten a chance to fully heal her injury from sparring with Chad, and getting hit there again had really thrown her off. Blood had begun trickling from her broken skin as if it were an open gash. The world was still literally "ringing" through her ears. So much that it was kind of hard for Orihime's mind to effectively "answer". That being the reason she had sort of fallen into a daze.

Despite this, she genuinely smiled before answering in a cipher voice.

"Um...no. Nothing like that really. I was just thinking how undamaged you look after taking all those attacks earlier." That was true, however there was a certain other reason which had caused her to smile.

Her facial expression, and voice became serious. "Looks like I'm going to have to do something about that along with those blades of yours."

_"Her reiatsu took a huge dive, from our attacks earlier, and even further from having to regenerate. I've got to attack before she recovers. She's not an arrancar, just a normal hollow, but I can't let my guard down. She's much stronger than the one I killed before when I first got my powers, plus she did something to Santen Kesshun! I need to be careful-," _she continued before she was interrupted by Baigon coming up to her ear and talking in a low voice so that the bladed hollow couldn't hear.

"Orihime, you must be wary of the enemy's tail. I'm sure the spike at the end is what did in Santen Kesshun. To get us off of her in the forest she pierced Santen Kesshun with the spike at the end of her tail, and the shield quickly got weaker and then deteriorated. Lily, Hinagiku and I tried to put as much energy into the shield as we could, but we weren't backed up by kotodama and were affected by whatever her ability was as well since it's effects flowed from the shield to us in the corners of it. I barely remember what happened, but the next thing I knew, we were being slung off her tail towards you. Just be careful, we're here for you and will protect you no matter what the cost," he finished warily as he flew off again with Lily and Hingiku.

"'Do something about those blades of mine?' Tch. In other words, 'thinking of a way to beat me' huh? Don't you worry a bit. We'll be moving from the visual approach to a more hands-on approach in a couple seconds," said the fearsome looking hollow causing Orihime to fully snap out of her previous daze and raise her guard. "But first hear me out because after this, there will be no more yapping!" she said before visibly raising her reiatsu in a lime green aura.

"The name's Fátima Aragón and no matter how badly I beat you down, you better not even dare to forget it! No matter how much you'll want to!" she said rushing forward in a blitz of speed.

_"Protect me? 'No matter what the cost'? Those are my lines Baigon. I wrote that script."_

Santen Kesshun was instantly there in Fátima's face.

"_I was scared! Scared that I lost all three of you!"_

Shocked, the hollow raised both her elbow blades and again cut straight into the shield, raising her feet up to push against it so she could again dismount. That would've made it the third third time in the past couple hours that somebody had forcefully dislodged from her shield and Orihime was having none of that nonsense.

_"The 'cost' of losing any of you again. It's too high to 'pay'. And I'll never let it happen!"_

"Santen Kesshun," she said quietly, as the shield instantly infused with energy, holding the hollow in place. Immediately, she gestured and it enlarged, and flew over to Orihime who jumped on top of it after it turned horizontal to the ground. She infused her feet in it to secure her in place, and flew out from under the bridge up in the air all the way above of it. The speed of shield's flight was terrific(the speed of the resulting wind however had pretty much totaled the girl's hair. It was all over the place)

With her experience diffusing through Hachi's Hachigyō Sōgai at the Visored warehouse, and training with the pink haired Visored himself, Orihime had finally realized that Santen Kesshun should be used more than a static barrier.(Bakudō 39: Enkosen be damned Urahara!*). Santen Kesshun wasn't just some stationary wall. It was dynamic. An unprecedented living, breathing, unstoppable and malleable barrier.

At about twenty-nine meters in the sky above the bridge, she swiped her hair out her eyes with both her hands, dislodged her feet, swiftly did a handstand, and fused her right hand into the shield in between her prisoner's lodged blades.

"What are you doi-!," began Fátima who could barely keep up with how quickly things had changed in a mere nine seconds.

"Invisible, infinite void! Formation of the spatial curtain to parry ye defamers! The fabric ebbs 'tween to repel thee!" shouted the spellcaster as her hand and then shield began glowing with bright white energy.

"Wha-?" yelled Fátima in confusion. The brightness of the shield blinding her, yet she couldn't afford to keep her eyes closed as she look at the girl on top of the shield in rage.

"Santen Kesshun, I reject!" she recited her kotodama's ending as her shield reached full strength and potential, locking in Fátima even more to the point that it felt like her blades were about to be snapped off where they were held in place. The shield was truly redeeming itself from previously. At this, Orihime's eyes began glowing blue with reiatsu as she locked eyes with her opponent on the other side of the shield, putting everything she had into her ability. Everything seemed to slow down when the shield began allowing gravity to pull it down, as a defining word was spoken.

"Shō!"

The resulting shockwave, broke the sound barrier nearly three and a half times over. Instantly, the bridge's road was decorated with some large newly formed stress fractures and a triangular pseudo-crater from the impact of the blast.

Gravity's hand yanked Orihime out of the air, before Santen Kesshun came up from the impact zone and swatted it away.

She caught the edge of the shield as it came up parallel to her to meet her descent and it folded under her, allowing her to sit up on it. It took the girl down to the scene of destruction. The shield returned to normal size, then dispelled; Hinagiku returning to hairpin form while Lily and Baigon went to retrieve Orihime's drawstring bag she had left on the bridge when jumping into the river earlier. Right there and then, a particularly large plasma-red explosion to the left engulfed the floor and canopy of the middle of the forest to her left.

"That's from the hollow fighting Sado-kun!" thought Orihime in alarm, before instinctively sensing out her friends reiatsu.

"He feels just fine Orihime, let Chad worry about himself! We have to finish this, then worry about him. That's the only way we'd be able to help out anyway," admonished Lily returning with Baigon and the bag, jarring the girl out of her distraction.

"You're right Lily," she said sighing in relief that Chad's reiatsu hadn't gone down a bit, meaning he had forced his opponent to do that blast. "If I have faith in anybody, it's definitely Sado-kun."

She regained her composure and now focused entirely on the prone Fátima lying on her back in the epicenter with her eyes closed.

"_I may be new to it, but I at least know a little about regeneration. So when I saw you regenerate, I knew I had only two possible paths to beating you," _she thought, putting the retrieved bag back on and making a motion to outstretch both her hands.

_"The first path being to draw you to me so I could catch you since I thought your blades clearly made you the close-range type fighter like Sado-kun. If you could regenerate injuries like scratches and cuts, then I'd just have to injure you another way. A way that would immobilize you and that you couldn't possibly regenerate from," _thought Orihime, power convulsing around her outstretched hands.

"Tsuba-ACK!" screamed Orihime, eyes widening in peril, as she was interrupted from her re-summoning of the offensive Rikka.

_"Wha-hap-when did she-!" _thought Orihime trembling in confusion and endless waves of pain, not yet even having had to time to lower her outstretched arms. She clutched her stomach in agony as blood began seeping out almost immediately.

Fátima's tail had actually _launched _the spike from itself straight into Orihime's stomach before a new spike grew back from inside her bean pod styled tail like a budding flower.

The hollow opened her eyes, and used her arms and legs to push herself up, before standing up completely, to Orihime's shock.

She seemed to at least be getting some cricks out her neck before noticing Orihime's expression and her eyes narrowed in disdain.

"What's with that look?...Wait what exactly were you trying to do? Squish me with that shield? Ha! I admit, being smashed _in between_ the shield _and_ this hard concrete, instead of just throwing me into the bridge was pretty smart. But the speed was weak if that was your goal. Plenty of hollows move faster than that while limping. You're so naive thinking you could beat me with such a simpl- …...Wait a sec...no way!" shouted Fátima rising her voice in realization. "Heh. You thought 'If I cut her arm off again, she'll just regenerate, so if I do this, then her bones will break from the inside and then she can't regenerate? ! You idiot! What do you think hollows are made of? You can't break me! You're thinking about me in human terms girl!" she shouted.

"Guh...," whimpered Orihime. The spiked attack was clearly meant for producing near- immobilizing pain rather than straight killing or even for knocking an opponent out. The very tip of it was sticking out in between of her middle and lower left abdomens. From the feel of it, it was wide in the middle, yet narrow and sharp on both ends, making even the potential extraction of it a daunting thought.

At making contact with Orihime's blood, the spike-turned-projectile apparently underwent a dual chemical reaction and abruptly lost it's consistency and re-hardened upon the then psuedo-liquid's contact with oxygen, almost closing up the wound in the process. Everything happened so fast.

At this, the pain surprisingly went down. Orihime removed her hand from her stomach in anxiety before it transmutated into to determination, _"No! There's no time to worry about what just happened, I've got to take her down while I still can! The other path to beating her is to cut her enough and with fatal enough cuts until she has no more reiatsu to regenerate herself. But even then, she's a normal hollow. All it takes is one good Koten Zanshun through the mask and she's done for."_

_"Hmmmm. What to do? She's just a human. All it takes is one good __or__ bad wrist-blade cut to the throat. Doesn't really matter either way. Oh wait..yeah I can't kill her...yet anyways. Oh well, I better knock her out before she pulls out any more tricks. Tch, look at that dork Ferenan hamming it up over there. He's enjoying himself too much. And it looks like this girl doesn't even feel what's happening to her little friend. Ah~, time to finish this up," _thought Fátima making a rapid advance and got about half a meter from Orihime who managed react in time to materialize Santen Kesshun right in front of the hollows face.

"Do you think I'd fall for that again! You're as dumb as you look!" she shouted disappearing and appearing behind Orihime in a burst of sound, coming down with both elbow blades to stab the girl only to hit none other than Santen Kesshun.

"WHAT? !"

"Santen Kesshun I reject." said Orihime without turning around, holding the hollow in place once again.

_"Impossible! It went right through her!"_ thought Fátima. She had clearly dodged Santen Kesshun's impending assault and appeared behind its summoner only for the shield to go _through _Orihime, meeting the hollow's impending strike.

_"How can it be solid and intangible at the same ti-!"_ she thought before she was interrupted.

"''Did she think you'd fall for it again?' Ha. Oh, comedic one-liners."  
>"What was that one saying about the 'third time being the charm'?"<br>"Yeah that's the one. Except she managed to be lucky enough to do it all three times instead," said three different voices.

"What the hell are those voices!...Wait a sec, don't tell me it's-it's those things! They can talk?,_"_ she said looking at the three corners of the shield in dread, only for her to be answered.

"You hear us _then_ ask if we can talk? Don't feel bad, I was secretly freaking out inside when your mouth started producing words too hollow lady. Anybody else felt that way?" asked another voice.  
>"As did I"<br>"Ditto," said the two other voices in agreement to the prisoner's dismay.

"_TSUBAKI!" _shouted Orihime, walking further away from the trapped hollow. Santen Kesshun better recalibrated it's positioning in front of the girl, enlarging and rising up off the ground to contain the large hollow.

The sole offensive rikka flew in in a flash of light light meeting in the girls hand as the hollow viewed from behind.

_"That light just came out of nowhere! What's she doing? !"_

Orihime turned around so her right side was facing the hollow, her face visible, her right arm outstretched with a luminescent Tsubaki.

Reiatsu was poring out of the girl, and this was proving to be her strongest attack with the Rikka yet. "Koten Zanshun! I reje-" she shouted before her eyes suddenly bulged and she brought both her hands to her mouth, instantly fell on her knees, and dry heaved.

Fátima smiled in the corner of her mouth before letting out the cry of a hollow into the night sky. Instead of dislodging from Santen Kesshun, she shattered it completely, cutting her way out with outstretched arms, and disappearing and reappearing in a burst of sound. At once her clawed foot viciously kicked Orihime in her chest with enough force to knock her off the bridge before she plummeted into the river below.

"MmmHmmm..., Efficient as always Fátima. It won't be long now," observed Aloban before refocusing his attention to Ferenan's fight in the shadows of the forest. Suddenly a defining explosion rang out. "Quite unexpected. Is this truly the best you can do Ferenan?"

* * *

><p><strong>Five minutes and thirty-six seconds earlier<strong>

**12:46 AM**

Earlier, Chad had been slammed down onto the forest floor in a move that would've surely paralyze a normal human, even hitting multiple branches on the way down. As soon as Ferenan's tongue retracted to the exterior of the forest, Chad got right up, regaining his footing.

Moment's later Ferenan blurred into view, making to punch Chad from behind with his right arm.

Chad immediately charged up a weak blast in his fist and back-handed Ferenan's incoming fist with a pivotal swing to the right.

As the two opposing forces met, the hollow's fist was literally caved in as it was flung back like a rag-doll. Chad's arm continued it's momentum smashing right into the profile of Ferenan's mask causing a large explosion.

Ferenan was effectively shot through the forest interior, crashing into rows of trees.

_"Your going to have to do better than that," _thought Chad in hot pursuit of his opponent.

_"I've got to to look out for that mouthless hollow. He could attack at any time, and he definitely seems to be the strongest among the three of them,"_ thought Chad as he homed in on Aloban's pressure.

In about eleven seconds, he followed the path of destruction that Ferenan had caused by flying away from the explosion. He saw that entire trees had been felled in a straight path until he finally got to the last one.

_"Where is he? !"_

"Over here! Too late human!" yelled a voice from directly behind causing Chad to spin around before looking up at the black-horned hollow.

The size of the hollow was more apparent than ever as the grayscale Ferenan was obviously the largest of the group. Chad barely came up to the bottom of his abdomens.

_"Why couldn't I sense him till now?"_he thought before his eyes widened even more at the spherical reiatsu coalescing in front of Ferenan's open mouth.

Wordlessly, Chad charged up a full powered blast. White-sky blue energy danced around his clenched fist almost like a flame before spreading out only up to the end of his humerus, indicating full-power. It was times like these he was glad his attacks had no incantation whatsoever to be at full power. Unlike shinigami with their zanpakutō or kidō, or even Orihime with her kotodamas. The only other person like him in that respect was Uryū or even...hollows in general.

"That's my line," he said simply as he thrusted forward and shot the blast at point blank range, with enough energy to end his foe right there.

Right as he shot it, it sputtered to non-existance in front of Ferenan's face, who eerily smiled, preparing the fire his own blast. It solidified into a sphere of energy.

"What! ?" exclaimed Chad audibly in shock before Ferenan lowered his mouth directly on top of his head. Then the world turned the color of bright blood.

The recoil of a particularly red cero-like blast beaconed into the night sky from the forest floor.

Ferenan waited patiently for the dust to clear on the branch of a nearby tree where he jumped to avoid getting caught up in his own atack.

Slowly, but surely the dust cleared revealing a highly singed and in some places scorched Chad, with his right hand held out where he had raised it to contest the cero-like blast. His shirt was damaged and smoke came off his hand in billows.

The palm of his hand showed only slightly melted black skin from his armor. Suddenly he clenched his outstretched hand into a shaking fist, lowering it back down at his side.

"That attack just now was really sloppy if it was supposed to finish me off. It wasn't concentrated at all. Even after you took all that time to charge it up, it was still just a big blob of energy, Like a water balloon,"

"Oh a cheeky one are we? And this is coming from the person who tried to defeat me with that pathetic excuse of a energy blast earlier. Really now. Just _what _was that?" he said smirking before it turned into a frown.

_"Darn it. What really did happen earlier? The energy flew out my arm as usual and then it's like it just fell apart! Luckily, I was able to charge up some more energy to hold back some of that attack just now. It's just like the time that giant Menos Grande attacked town. The way the energy formed at it's mouth and then shot at Ichigo, but I've never seen a normal hollow do it. Even so, there's something weird about these guys. They are much stronger than average hollows. Wait.. scratch that, stronger than any hollow I've faced at least. It's to be expected that there would be large gaps of power in between different hollows, but..."_

"Your time is up human. 'Finish you off'? Do you really think I would use even half of my energy trying to kill you just now when you know you heard that guy in the air above the river said we are going to capture you? Take a look around this forest and see what my attack did. It's you who was simply strong enough to counter it. Consider that a compliment. Next time I'll just have to use more energy. It's that simple," said Ferenan arms crossed looking down at Chad.

_"T-that's right. I almost forgot they said they wanted to capture us or something like that earlier. But why?..." _thought Chad, eyes narrowing before regaining his composure.

"Hm. Even if you did that blast five times stronger, though I'm sure what you showed just now was at most of your power, it would still be just as sloppy but just on a bigger scale. You can't kill me with that unless you did it for days and I stood still. It's like trying to wear down a rock with water. It would take a pretty long time I'd guess," said Chad with a straight face as if actually thinking about what he said.

"Pft. Your sincere stoic arrogance actually makes me laugh! Over-exagerating much?"

"In denial much? Also, what was that about my 'pathetic energy blast' earlier? That's not what the side of your head and all the broken trees think at all, and if anything, it _was _'weak' because it was hardly at full-power. But that's all I needed to dent your mask," said Chad in swift response. He usually wasn't the bantering type, but this hollow had somehow gotten under his skin. Either that or there was something that was agitating him, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Something didn't feel right, and his attacks not working emphasized and all but confirmed that feeling.

"Don't underestimate me boy." said Ferenan calmly to Chad who actually looked slightly amused.

"It's going to get annoying if you call me 'boy' every couple seconds. My name is Yasutora Sado. 'Sado' to you," he said confidently getting in stance, before his expression transformed to one of shock.

"_What? Inoue's reiatsu!" _he thought in alarm as his head swung in her general direction. It was violently fluctuating like a flame about to die before going back to normal and then repeating the process over and over.

"Oh, so you noticed after all. The reason I wanted to fight you was because I knew you'd prove to actually be a warm-up compared to that weakling of a girl. Her spiritual pressure will keep pulsating like that, but lowering more and more each time every time it stabilizes. Now that you know and the stakes are raised, we get to make things a little more serious!" he yelled raising his reiatsu.

Chad turned his head around to face him at this.

"Hmm. Fine then. You've been shouting things like 'let's finish this' for a while now. So much that it's lost it's meaning. But now," he said charging up another full powered energy blast.

"I don't have any time to play games with you!" he shouted and made to prepare to fire the energy from his fist before this energy too dispersed into what seemed like thin air.

"_Again!_" thought Chad grasping his forearm in confusion.

"Ha! I just love the look of terror on my opponent's faces when they realize just how helpless they really are," taunted Ferenan, causing Chad to look up in the tree where the hollow was roosted roosted in frustration.

"That's it! That's the look! What's wrong? You seem confused human, but I can explain things if you want. This is going to be a kinesthetic learning experience, so allow me to get you re-introduce you to some powerful nostalgia!" he said nodding the top of his head, and his ringed horns directly at Chad.

"_What's he planning now?_" thought Chad, preparing to dodge whatever was to happen

Immediately, his horns actually began to resonate and reverberate in a light, hardly audible sound.

"_What exactly is that supposed to be do-" _he thought before his eyes widened in sharp pain. Dull, but powerful vibrations channeled throughout his right arm,.

"GGAAAAHAAAH!" he shouted, clenching his eyes, grasping with his left hand where Ferenan's tongue had impaled him at the shoulder. His entire upper arm felt like it was on fire, from the inside and outside.

"You see man, I wasn't sure whether to activate this on a normal human seeing as it would rip them apart from the inside-out. But then I hypothesized, since you survived my previous tongue vibration. I thought, then why not 'this'? One has to take chances in experimenting after all don't they?

At that moment, the vibrations concluded as a solution of blood, and some other liquid launched out of Chad's wound in between the two flat extensions on his shoulder as if it were alive. It bubbled, up forming a cylinder-like center in between the extensions which then hardened, and multiple rings that clenched around the two extensions from the top to the bottom were simultaneously formed also.

Ferenan looked quite pleased with his handiwork.

"W-What is this! ?" shouted Chad in alarm at such a grotesque scene happening to his own body. His insides were still ringing from the vibrations.

Ferenan acted like he didn't hear the human, yet began answering him at the same time. "Hmm. Speaking of my tongue stab earlier, that reminds me, did you not notice my saliva?"

Chad was silent in response as he flashed back to getting stabbed with the hollow's tongue and where it had secreted lots of liquid.

_"Saliva?"_

"Ah, I see you have a good memory after all. I concluded earlier that your right arm was the source of your power. My entire tongue stab was just to allow me to secrete my saliva solvent, and I vibrated my tongue for good measure for deeper penetration to make sure I infected your blood stream as well. Of course some got all over your arm and dried there as well, but that was just fine seeing as it seeped into your pores. I'm assuming that 'armor' still has pores after all?"

Chad was feeling anxiety at where the hollow was going with this, still clenching his arm.

"So what? You ability is some kind of poisonous spit? How original," stated Chad, only to meet a fist in his face, sending him crashing headfirst into a tree.

Somehow, he instantly recovered and caught an incoming kick with his right arm, clenched the hollow's foot, and made to swing the entire beast into the ground by brute strength and momentum.

Ferenan was having none of this, and launched his tongue at Chad's unprotected chest, forcing him to let go of his foot and dodge. Chad momentarily retreated, jumping up on a nearby tree branch from the ground.

_"I've got to watch his speed,"_ thought Chad.

"Now, continuing where I left off before I was interrupted by that absurd comment. 'Poison'? Really now 'Sado'?"

Chad didn't like the way his name sounded coming off of the hollow's barbed tongue.

"Do you really think an ability of a being like me would be so primitive? Someone of my intellect would obviously have an ability to match."

_"'A being like him'? 'Intellect'?" _thought Chad mentally deadpanning.

"My ability has absolutely nothing to do with poison. Don't lower me to the level of that woman over there fighting your friend. My power is much more 'complexly elegant' so to speak. I merely secreted that saliva on your arm as a means of storage until I felt like activating it. Until then, it had a double purpose of conveniently disrupting your reiatsu output whenever you tried to attack. It had already dried onto your arm, and was also flowing through your very veins."

Chad's anxiety rose higher with each additional detail. The added details of Orihime's opponent did nothing to lower it.

"That 'disruption' ability wouldn't last much longer. Your reiatsu was too strong. So when activating it, I of course vibrated my horns. Every single drop of saliva responded to the frequency of my horns and immediately vibrated, coming back to the point where I stabbed you at. Flowing out your bloodstream, vibrating off your arm, out of the skin it had dried and seeped into, turning back into liquid, all to form the 'node' you see on your shoulder now. That node, made of your own blood Sado Yasutora, that's the center of my power!"

"Everything starts now!" he continued, as his horns began the same whirring vibration. Chad wasn't sure what was going to happen and braced for some kind of explosion, but what happened was actually rather anti-climatic. The node simply began vibrating similar to Ferenan's horns. Since it had formed out of his wound it still caused him moderate discomfort, but certainly not the paralyzing pain from previously.

Then it happened. Chad felt a feeling similar to when he had been stabbed. That same vague siphoning feeling.

_"So my reiatsu __was__ getting drained back there!"_

"Ah now you get it now? Don't you? My power is the most unique you'll ever come across. **'****Bobina Sangre'** ('Ketsueki Indakuta', Spanish for _"Blood Coil"_, Japanese for _"Blood Inductor"_)". It takes advantage of a property of energy transmission called 'resonant inductive coupling'!"

"Energy transmission?" asked Chad aloud.

"That's right! My Bobina Sangre allows me to transfer reiryoku wirelessly through the air from my victim to me. These ringed horns on my head are only solely horns aesthetically. They're main functional role is what I like to call _recieving coils_ while your 'node' is the _source coil_. I make my horns and the node resonant at the same exact frequency, allowing for a continuous transfer of energy of up to 40+ percent each time you use reiryoku! Normally, the source coil would be much smaller, and unnoticeable but I couldn't help but over-salivate on the tastiest looking human I've ever seen! It's been so long since I've eaten one, let alone actually finding one with reiatsu. Maybe I'll just kill you on 'accident' and then eat you! How's that soun-GUYAAAH!" shouted Ferenan in pain, flying up in the air from Chad's abrupt upper cut.

Quickly, he jumped up the tree branches, and met the hollow in mid-air in the canopy of the trees coming down with a stronger punch this time, smashing him back down to the forest floor, causing a large impact of the hollow actually managing to land on it's feet. Chad's fist had literally caved in his mask in two different areas in those two attacks, connecting them with stress fractures.

"That explanation was way too long. Plus you were getting too worked up. If my energy blasts just give you power, then I'll beat you the old fashioned way," said Chad landing in front of his opponent.

Ferenan lunged at Chad with his fist, which Chad caught. Albeit being pushed back swiftly, he moved making to punch the hollow in the gut, only to be caught by wrist right before contact by the hollow's free hand. The force pushed Ferenan back considerably, as he jumped back.

"Must be tough only being able to use one limb huh Yasutora Sado?. Heh," he began as he crouched down making to re-engage his opponent.

"My name is Ferenancio Drenajería.("affectionately" called 'Ferenan' by his teammates). Like I said before, your powers are really uninteresting and boring, and now that you've seen my ability and know my name, it's time this lackluster 'battle' ends. My ability works with percentages, not exact values. This means no matter how hard you fight, the rate of energy transfer will always stay the same! So now," he said exhuming the same reiatsu steam as before, but on a grander scale. All the dent's in his mask actually filled in. "Let's try another experiment! I'll grant you the chance to see my full power! How long will you last before giving in to exhaustion? Let alone fighting me at full strength!" he shouted, his spiritual pressure beginning to rise.

_"I get it, if he keeps up this energy zapping, he can always regenerate without any cost to his own reiatsu, while I get weaker and weaker! I need to end this now, before he gets too unpredictably stronger to injure badly enough. Inoue's reiatsu...I don't know how much longer she can keep that up! She's in trouble and yet, she's probably thinking the same thing about me," _thought Chad looking over where he felt Orihime seemingly in the high point of her battle, before turning fully to Ferenan._ "I don't fully get all that stuff he said about 'forty percent', but considering how effective the weak blasts I used on him earlier were, one thing's for sure," _thought Chad charging up an full powered energy blast in his fist.

_"60% is all I need, to beat him in one hit right now!" _he thought shouting to the early morning, firing his blast at point-blank range, only to be met by another spontaneous expunging of red energy from Ferenan. A clash of red and blue waves of power, and the forest was drowned in purple.

Aloban was currently watching both fights at the same time, using his tail as a sensor of all vibrations in the prevailing area to get a sort of unique sonic perception. "Ah, it's about time that fight picked up. I thought they were actually going to speak each other into submission, and I was going to have to 'intervene'," he thought.

"And this child over here," he said looking over at Orihime. "She's really quite remarkable," he finished looking intensely at the chestnut-brown haired girl.

**2 minutes and 4 seconds earlier**

**12:51 AM**

Orihime plummeted to the bottom of the river, her body still in shock from the rapid change of events. The next thing she realized was a golden barrier around her.

_"It's...__**Sōten Kisshun"**_, she thought before everything came slamming down on her at once and she snapped out of her malaise. She realized that although she was underwater, she was still breathing somehow. Upon half a second of further investigation she realized, she was actually inside the shield, and it had apparently been made airtight upon her falling into the river. It was then that she felt the throbbing pain in her chest, from being impaled from the hollow's three claws and coughed up blood. Wasn't Sōten Kisshun supposed to take away the pain by default while the patient was healed? That's what the people she healed at Soul Society after Aizen's betrayal had told her it did, and at that time she had finally managed to use the technique without its kotodama.

"Sōten K-kisshun,_**" **_she manage to strangle out her throat.

The healing speed increased and was moderate, but hardly at full strength, and the pain only numbed. She figured the more conscious she became, the faster the healing speed would return to normal, similar to during her sparring against Chad, but the shield actually stagnated in healing speed, further perplexing her.

"I reject," she finished, increasing the speed again, yet still not at full strength or speed.

Right as the top of her wound closed up, she saw a figure coming straight for her from the luminescent light produced by her shield in the dark water, The light refraction of the water betrayed her depth perception, and her shield was sliced, allowing water to pour in at once.

This forced Orihime back into battle mode.

She wordlessly summoned Baigon, Hinagiku, Lily with them instantly coming out of her hairpins where they had automatically returned upon Orihime's injury.

A kotodama-less Santen Kesshun formed under her and she merged with it, escaping away from the doomed healing shield, as it diffused through its bottom, flying out into the water and coming up, getting a good distance from shore.

"Shun'ō, Ayame," she re-summoned her Rikka. She didn't think they could just float around underwater, unless they were in flight/technique mode seeing as she found out she could basically fly underwater with Santen Kesshun during her sparring with Chad. But, seeing as she was no longer using her healing technique she called them up. Didn't they need to breath too?

Fátima burst out the water, somersaulting in the air and landed on shore. They were in the same spot Orihime and Chad where after the girl got Chad out of the river.

Disappearing in a burst of speed, Orihime actually managed to follow it, dodging backwards from the dual wrist-blade cut while still merged with her shield. The hollow chased Orihime who had flew up in the air.

_"Since the beginning, after getting punched under the bridge, I've been very slowly adjusting to her speed, but now I can react to it completely!"_said Orihime marveling in a mixture of wonder and confusion at her reflexive ability, before noticing Fátima on her tail.

_"Looks like she's not in the mood for talking anymore huh? Fine then,"_ thought Orihime, banking to the left, only to meet Fátima's impending double forearm-blade cuts.

Four dark green/black blades sunk in air as gravity's hands pulled them down to the earth, and the sound of a hollow cried into the morning.

"Alright lizard freak, you may think your blades are sharp, but lets get one thing straight!" said a energetic flanged male voice.

"Nothing exists that is sharp besides me, everything else is dull," said Tsubaki calmly.

"_One of her creatures...it's the one she tried using on the bridge," _she said recognizing his color scheme_. "It sliced right through my blades mid-slice! How can anything be that sharp? He's not even a blade! And my blades are the sharpes-...I see. This is the one that cut off my arm. I knew I sensed her reiatsu where I was cut. Even Ferenan pointed it out, but finally seeing it with my own eyes...,_" thought Fátima remembering being shocked at how evenly her arm was cut before growing in rage. She switched gears and put on a smile.

"Such a small thing. Every time she uses one of whatever you are, her reiatsu goes down, meaning you're dependent on her. To have such power, yet be completely dependent on an inept user. How sad," she said as new blades burst out of her skin in a way that looked painful.

"SAD FOR YOOOOUU!" shouted Tsubaki bolting at her.

"Koten Zanshun!" shouted Orihime powering her Rikka up as he unexpectedly re-engaged the hollow.

Fátima disappeared and reappeared in another burst of sound. Tsubaki, and the hollow stood back to back for a moment, as his bandana came off. His back was to Orihime, so she couldn't see his face. Even then, his face was shadowed.

"I should let you know something right now. These really aren't 'blades'. They're actually a type of thorn. You know, I have to thank you for 'stripping' them off so cleanly like that. They were getting pretty of dull. It really sucks because usually I have to wait for them to grow full size. But by the time they're full size, they're already dull from all the fighting. Even then, all they do is fall off like antlers. And so then I have to wait for the new ones grow in. But since you dug into my forearms and cut them straight off from their roots, I could regenerate entirely new ones at both full size and sharpness!"

Tsubaki was silent for a moment before turning around and zooming towards Orihime, and started pulling at her hair.

"Women! What was that? I should have cut her straight in half without you even saying the kotodama! And you say part of it and _I'm _the one that get's cut?

"W-wha? Tsuba!-Ow! That's hurts Tsubaki-kun! You're not letting me explai-" complained Orihime before Tsubaki had a bird-like foot lodged in his face.

"Hey Tsubaki? What's your deal? We're in the middle of a fight! You know the hollow did some trick with her tail spike to Santen Kesshun and then Orihime herself. It's messing with our strength," said Shun'ō flanked by Ayame.

The Rikka captain was worried. If the spike did what Lilly and Hinagiku told him it did to Santen Kesshun, then what the heck was it doing to his wielder. Even a full incantation S_ō_ten Kisshun while finishing the healing of her cheek gash, and almost finished on the chest wound, hadn't been able to heal the girl's stomach injury at all. That spike was made of super-condensed reishi, and normally they would be able to reject it out of her given a lot of time and focus, but it was obviously the root of the girl's problems. He looked at Orihime and noticed something. The girl was tired and she was panting. A lot. The water from the river she was drenched in went through much trouble much to hide it, but she was also in a cold sweat. It was as if he was an empath and could feel what the girl felt if he tried hard enough. He knew the rest of the Rikka saw and felt this as well.

Tsubaki immediately retorted, "Messing with our strength? ! Then let me cut the thing out of her and you and Ayame heal her back before we lose any more power till we're not able to even do that!" It's not like Tsubaki was eager to do such a thing. He was feeling pretty stressed at the way things were going, and was determined not to let the hollow's 'thorns' so much as come within breathing distance of the girl.

"Well now? Looks like you've brought all your little friends out to play. And sounds like a plan little guy, but I'd advise you not to do that, unless you want to make things worse for yourself. Then by all means, cut her. That'll be something to see, but you're definitely not going to do it on MY TIME!" shouted Fátima swooping down to slice at Orihime with her now sharper forearm blades, only to meet Koten Zanshun in a sort of blade collision.

Orihime noticed something. Perhaps it was the karate student in her, but the way Fátima fought with her 'thorns'. It was almost like she had developed her own martial art based on them. Like zanjutsu, but the blades were on her body. A unique natural fusion of her zanjutsu-like martial art, and hand-to-hand combat which made it borderline impossible to fight against with just hand-to-hand, or even just zanjutsu by themselves.

Tsubaki spoke up during more 'blade collisions', and air maneuvers, "Just who are you calling 'little'? Because I've been watching all this time, thinking you must be what a dwarf hollow looks like if you aren't actually one already. At least I'm the size I'm supposed to be. Did some hollow hit you with a shrink ray ability or what? Seeing as hollows have stupid powers like that."

_"Tsubaki, don't compare the enemy to dwarves. That's offensive...to dwarves I mean,"_ thought Shun'ō shaking his head.

Orihime spoke up, while dodging a swipe at her neck, "If you think I'm going to tire out any time soon from having to use less spiritual power then you're mistaken. I've been training for this type of situation all along," she said, at this point standing on Santen Kesshun with her feet locked in.

_"I don't know why, but just the way this girl acts. Her idiotic childish confidence! And there's something else about her. It really ticks me off!"_

The hollow disappeared, and re-appeared punching Orihime in the face in a sort of overhand punch, sending her spiraling downward, still attached to the glowing shield,

Halfway to the ground, she regained control and rode the shield down like a board, landing back on the ground, the hollow landing a few feet back from her.

"That's wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Sado-kun punches way harder than that," said Orihime, genuinely surprised, yet accidentally taunting the hollow at the same time.

Tsubaki sweat-dropped at this. _"'Not as bad as you thought it would be?' You messed up the wording woman! Don't say it like that! You just got decked in the face!"_

"Your attempt at trash talk? Leave that to your little friends. Hmm," Fátima said in thought. "You truly are inhuman you know that? A normal human's soul would have been separated from their body from the very first punch I landed on you. And the 'punch' just now was actually meant to knock some sense into you, so don't get a big head," she said closing her eyes in annoyance and crossing her arms. She somehow managed to achieve the latter feat without stabbing herself at all.

"You've trained for 'having to use less spiritual power'? Don't you dare compare my ability to that guy fighting your pal over there like he won the lottery on his birthday or something. It's not that you're having to use less energy, it's that you're slowly beginning to be unable to use reiryoku at all. It doesn't matter how efficient you are at conserving and using reiryoku, if my ability specifically targets that in the first place."

All the Rikka were floating in front of and to the sides of Orihime as they took in what the hollow was saying(Santen Kesshun was dispelled upon landing).

_"So what I felt from Sado-kun is true. Even though he's stronger than his opponent, I'm still worrying about him. His opponent must have some kind of ability too or else that they would've been easily defeated by now," _thought Orihime.

"What you've been calling a 'spike' this whole time is actually a seed. To be exact, it's called **'Glotón Semilla'** ( 'Donyoku no shushi', Spanish for: _"Gluttonous Seed"_, Japanese for _"Seed of Greed"_)" Shooting it in you from my tail, it came in contact with your blood and liquefied, infecting your bloodstream which made you feel nauseous earlier. After it re-hardened, it had already anchored itself both inside your human body, and the reishi that makes up your spiritual body. It's embedded to your soul so that even if I knock you out of your body, it'll still be there. I'll admit I didn't know how using it on a human body would work, but now I see it works wonders," continued Fátima.

"Although it's no ordinary seed, it still is one. Your body is the dirt, and your reiatsu are its water and nourishment. Once you max out your reiatsu in an attack, it adapts to your output of power, releasing a corresponding amount of 'poison' (as idiots love to call it) out of is reishi-dense core. I personally like to call it 'sedative liquid'. Most posion is designed to kill, but 'sedatives' simply incapacitate. Your attack earlier on the bridge is what activated it, and now with you continuously using all your abilities, it's constantly adapting, extending it's 'roots' inside you. Getting to know you so it can perfectly shut your body down from the inside out, leaving you in a perfectly preserved state. I'm actually pretty excited. It's not often somebody is dumb enough to get caught by such a slow projectile," she said getting in a stance, putting Orihime on alert.

"So then, are we finished here? I'll tell you what, let's see what else you can try before you keel over, I might as well bring everything out of you while you still can mov-" she began but was stopped.

Orihime was charging at the hollow at top speed on board Santen Kesshun.

"Coming right at me? ! Now you're getting predictable, but I like it!" she shouted before Orihime abruptly arced up towards the air, securing a spot and looking down at the hollow.

"You think you've beaten me just like that? Does your power have no holes? You said it just now. 'Your poison adapts to the output of my reiatsu at my highest, and poisons me accordingly, slowly bringing me down further and further'. I've been thinking since you said that. The thing is, since when did I ever put all my possible power into an attack since I was infected? Let alone say I was ever fighting at full power? That Koten Zanshun on the bridge was nothing if that's what the poison's capped me off at reiatsu-wise!"

_"Tch. Does she think she's invincible? !" _thought Fátima who began gathering green reiatsu at her beak.

"So I'll do what you ask!" she yelled, as all three free Rikka fly around her energetically and Santen Kesshun swelled with energy. Her hair flying from the energy she was outputting."You said you wanted to see what I can do so keep your eyes wide open, because this only happens once!" she shouted, straining as she clenched her fists at her side, and they flashed with spouts of light. The girl truly knew this was her best chance, but she wasn't worried about any possible faliure at all. Faliure truly had never crossed her mind. She just knew all she had to do was end it right there and then.

"Alabaster abyss of the sealed four pillar realm! Bearer of perpetual luminescence! Foil of ephemeral black voids from whence light is quelled! Take shape and slay thy nemesis!" With each individual clause, her reiatsu multiplied, as she charged down towards her destination of the hollow. .

"What is she doing? ! I can't sense her next movement," thought Fátima, finalizing her energy blast in her mouth.

Suddenly, Orihime flipped, dislodged and kicked Santen Kesshun towards the hollow, putting barely any energy into it, allowing it to be the equivalent of intangible. Despite the hollow bursting away in another speed dash, Orihime saw this coming and expanded the shield with great speed in all directions by Baigon, Hinagiku, and Lily flying at top speed from the three corners of the shield, until the hollow appaeared somewhere in the field of the shield.

"Santen Kesshun! I reject!" she shouted, and instantly, the shield closed as tight as possible around the hollow like a rubber band snapping back in place; the shield being smaller than usual allowed for denser reiatsu concentration, thus maxium strength, holding Fátima's arms in place.

"AAAARGH!" shouted Fátima trying to maintain her energy blast, and turned to see Orihime diving down in the air, looking the girl straight in the eye.

"_That's it!" _shouted Orihime in her head, putting her right arm forward revealing it glowing with the brightest energy Fátima had ever seen. It's luminescence drowning out all other light wherever it was. The hollow finalized her blast and prepared to fire.

Instantly, the girl extended her index, and middle finger, making sure they were spread apart. All that concentrated light flowed to her fingertips, as she pointed them at the hollow. **Had****ō**** #2: Shiro Ana** (白穴, _White Hole_)!

As soon as the last syllable left the girls mouth, for Fátima, just for an instant; the entire world was an infinite amount of colors and that's when the whiteness consumed her. Then the agony consumed every fiber of her being as she let out a hollow's roar of pain. Add that with an influx of confusion, and disorientation, yet unable to even fall to the ground to writhe in pain and clutch her eyes, still being held in place, absorbing every ounce of pain. At some point during it all that she couldn't even tell, her coalescing energy blast had exploded right in her face from loss of control, cracking her mask.

Orihime had the shield carrying Fátima move over to her impending impact in preparation to break her fall. The corner of the shield which Lily controlled, extended from the back of the hollow allowing her a safe landing, lodging her feet into the shield as she landed before dislodging and bolting for the hollow trapped in the center, jumping with as much strength as possible by the hollow's screaming mask to get father up above the much larger hollow. She was directly over it's head before she abruptly felt a wave a nausea and screamed with all her might pointing her arms down.

"Tsubaki! Koten Zanshun, I reject!

A yellow flash of re-summoning, the launching, and then an explosion and another hollow cry. Then what Orihime felt next was the hard thud of her head hitting the wet grass almost knocking her out then and there.

She saw her hairpins on the ground, grasped them with her hand and managed to roll over in the grass to look at what she assumed was her handiwork and took it all in.

The first thing she saw was the splatter of blood on the ground, and next, raising her head she saw her.

Fátima was still held in place by the shield, literally gagging on her own blood. Apparently, Tsubaki's attack had went through Santen Kesshun without cutting it in half, being made of the same energy after all. You couldn't really tell because of the shield still holding it in place and how clean it was cut, but the hollows right arm had been completely severed _past_ what Orihime could only assume(if she had her hollow anatomy correct) was the edge of her clavicle and scapula collectively. That was just the start.

The right side of her mask had been completely perfectly chipped, stripping away the top surface and all her green scale like designs, leaving only the white skeletal mask material that made up it's structure. This feat meant that the mask was actually beginning to reveal the human skin behind the eye hole which never was fully covered into the first place. It was the most damaged section of the mask. The left side was still fractured from her psuedo-cero, as was her right side.

Her slender build, and Orihime's last minute weakness spared her torso and midsection until you got to edge of her right leg where the thigh, quadriceps and hamstings sort of meet. There was also the stump where her tail used to be. Effectively, Tsubaki had been shot in front of the right side of of his victim's mask, effected at the last second by Orihime's faltering, chipping into the mask, and cutting off the right arm and into the joint, diffusing through Santen Kesshun and continuing his straight path down. He hit open air where the hollow's waist curved in, but hitting flesh again upon reaching the right hip and thighs, cutting everything in his path until reaching the ground. A near bisection if things had went better.

Yet Orihime was still shocked at how much damage she had done. When she noticed the hollow was moving its beak and words weren't coming out, she realized it was because her ears were ringing. Blood flooded on top of Santen Kesshun and was still spilling out on the ground. Instantly the shield borderline exploded, as the now free prisoner finally fell to the ground and clutched her eyes in pain with her left arm.

As sound returned to the human girl's senses, it overloaded her, forcing her to fully snap out of her daze.

"AAAAAAARGH! MY EYES! I'M BLIND!" was just some of what Orihime heard, and not in that order. The rest was unable to be interpreted clearly in her state besides screams and sobbing as she writhed on the ground. Her screams now sounded human(in the same late teenaged girl voice that Orihime had remarked on in her mind previously), as opposed to the cries of a hollow from earlier. It was surreal and bone-chilling.

Though through some way shape or form, Orihime pushed up off the ground and stood up.

She had managed to ignore the effects of the sedatives up to that point, and even over-powering the makeshift reiatsu ceiling it had imposed on her. Yet if that last wave of nausea was anything to go buy, the poison was adapting to her recent reiatsu output at this very second. The only reason she probably wasn't fully incapacitated yet was because she had ignored even that last attempt the poison used at crippling her and instead fired Koten Zanshun. She didn't know what was going to happen or how fast it would adaptaccordingly, but she definitely knew her stuggle wasn't over. She just needed to find a way to end it.

"Sōten Kisshun, I reject," she called out only for the shield to not even be able to hold a stable form as it crumbled to into sparkling reishi.

The girl thought what sort of sadistic sedatives these were seeing as it pretty much was poison to her. After that attack, it felt like she was having multiple migraines at once, and it wasn't just because she hit her head on the ground. This was Orihime. She never got migraines, she _caused _them with her accidental headbutts. She also had that annoying stabbing pain that you get sometimes when you breathe in except it was with every breath. Her vision was going blurry and her eyes were burning. Her cold sweat turned into a freezing sweat, which conflicted the burning feeling going on throughout her body.

"_If that's the case,_" reasoned the girl in her head at seeing her shield fail.

Thinking up another one of her plans and putting everything together, similar to the way she thought of the plan to train with Chad, she called over Ayame and sent her to the boy to inform him of it. She realized that while she didn't really know what was going on in the Rikka's head, that they knew everything that went on in hers. The same as a zanpakutō. The whole point of her initially training for the 'shared consciousness' was to achieve the reverse of that as well. But even taking advantage of the ability of the Rikka knowing all her thoughts by default was a step forward. Plus she had no energy to tell her entire plan in the first place.

At some point Orihime noticed, the hollow had actually managed to get up.

"Y-yOU! You'll pay for this if it's the last thing I do! How dare you use such a cheap cowardly attack! That's what you got pushed into! ? This is why humans are wea-," she was cut off.

"Those are words of somebody who has lost. 'Cheap, cowardly'? There is no honor in a fight with life or death at stake. I know that it's either you or me," the strange words came out of Orihime's mouth like a robot, as if it wasn't of her own mind or she was reading it from a script. She wasn't even sure how loud she was talking. Not even speaking to the hollow, more than trying to assure herself of her decision. Even with all her resolve, she wasn't the type of person to just finish off a dying hollow with a finishing blow, or even kill in general. Not even most shinigami wanted to do such a thing as finishing an opponent off.

"GUhaAAAH!" shouted Fátima.

_"What? She's raising her reiatsu..no she's-"_

Unknown liquid burst out of Fátima right arm socket, before hardening and cracking away extra material revealing a fledgling arm, her mask filled in the fractures they had with a white version of the same liquid that looked like glue. The same process regenerated her tail, and damaged right leg.

"Let's see if you can take this!" she shouted charging up another psuedo-cero at the exact same time she was regenerating. It formed much faster and fired right as Orihime brought up Santen Kesshun. It cracked and the shield was engulfed in the green blast, blasting her a little up the hill towards the road.

The shield had protected her from the bulk of the blast, so only her clothing and her arms were slightly burned. Getting back up and maintaining consciousness, that was when she noticed it. She had a black seedling growing out her stomach. Currently in monocot form, looking like it could just turn into a dicot at any moment.

"Ha, so it feels like it finally happened. You're really strange you know that?" began Fátima. Her eyelids still clenched together.

"_I've been told,"_ thought Orihime in her head. The arrancar named Ulquiorra had said the same thing, but that's not what the girl was talking about. She'd been called strange her whole life. From her hair to her personality, to her eating habits. Not that she minded. Nobody could tell her her cooking wasn't good if it tasted good to her. That's all that mattered.

"Usually it happens much quicker with hollows, but took so long on you for some reason. The 'poison' is adapted to your max potential. But it's good that it took so long, because now it's 'roots' are ingrained into you that much better. I never explained it that good, but by adapting when you use all your power, the poison gains access deeper into your soul, directly affecting your **Saketsu** ((鎖結 _Binding Chain_). It's weird, I mean you should have a Binding Chain since you have spiritual powers, but also have a **Chain of Fate** (因果の鎖 _Inga no Kusari_) since you're still human. It seems contradictory, but whatever your little special freak case is, it's affecting whatever it is you have that boosts your reiryoku. At this point your attacks are nothing! It won't be long either before it homes in on your **Hakusui** (魄睡 _Soul Sleep_). By the time you'll be powerless _and _comatose. This is the power of my sedatives girl!"

"You're at the end of the line as well," simply responded Orihime, her still damp hair covering her eyes.

The words struck fear into the hollow. "What did you say?"

"Being able to see and feel your regeneration again, it goes back to my thoughts from earlier about how to beat you. Breaking your bones didn't work, so I decided to just cut until you couldn't recover or regenerate any longer. I can tell that your regeneration isn't meant to be used the way you've been using it. Normally, it should only be used for scratches and at most, deep cuts. Not sliced off limbs. You must have went through some intensive training to force it to be able to do what it has done, but using it this way and at such speed completely drains your reiatsu. And after you already lost energy from being injured in the first place. Then you went and fired those energy blasts. You have absolutely no reiatsu left."

"You think you're so smart! I'll show you 'no reiatsu'! I don't need any to cut you into pieces!" she shouted, forcibly opening her eyes and running at Orihime.

_"She's not even able to disappear like before, but it looks like Shiro Ana wore off. If my normal attacks aren't working, then I'm just going to have to be even more creative like Hachi-sensei said. Come on Ayame, what's taking so long? !"_

* * *

><p><strong>Meanwhile at that same moment<strong>

**1:07 AM**

Back in the forest, or what used to be part of the forest, it had reached the point where Chad and Ferenan were having the equivalent of a fast-paced boxing match. As in continuously punching each other in the face. Then one person seems down for the count before bringing out a new move.

"HHAAAA!" yelled Chad punching the hollow to the towards the ground. He landed on the ground and actually picked up one of the initially destroyed trees, swung it back completely, and slammed it down full force on top of the hollow's head.

Suddenly, the tree rose up out the ground and exploded. Ferenan, vibrating his horns faster to actually get the tree off them. One of them actually looked dinged.

"Looks like those things are pretty fragile," commented Chad.

"Indeed they are," responded Ferenan, grabbing the horn and violently ripping it out his head, and regenerating another.

"Oh? Do you really have reiastu like that to spare?" taunted Chad.

"Why of course," responded Ferenan with a smirk.

"_Walked right into that one," _thought Chad mentally face-palming.

The hollow disappeared. Truthfully he was livid. This human was fighting dare he say, on par with him even with decreased reiatsu.  
>Chad saw this coming and parried the incoming attack. And by parrying I mean with his fist, smashing into the grayscale hollow's stomach.<p>

"Is that all you've got?" asked Ferenan shooting his tongue at Chad, but the boy had planned for this. He grabbed the barbed tongue with his left hand and pulled down to his level, smashing a full powered energy blast into the hollow's mask. But he managed to dodge at the last second by yanking his head causing the blast to fly into the air and explode.

Chad let go of the hollow tongue right before he started vibrating it or secreting saliva. His hand was still totaled from the barbs on the tongue, but he figured better that hand than risking his right arm again.

Ferenan while he was still down on Chad's level, made to actually bite him from the left side.

Chad jumped back at this and turned to his right side, yet this was anticipated by his opponent who followed the turn in a burst of speed, managing to instead punch Chad in the face.

Chad instantly recovered, despite getting pushed back about ten feet.

His navy blue collared shirt was damaged in all sorts of ways from the two energy basts. When their energy blasts had collided earlier, both of their attacks being unstable, simply exploded upon contact with one another. After that the world was purple, and from it emerged the two combatants who were fighting like just now the entire time since then.

Chad knew that his reiryoku was basically being 'taxed', by the node. Transferring a certain percentage of energy back to the hollow. So he figured that his blast back during that time would have been strong enough to finish the hollow. And that even the forty percent taken from his attack wouldn't give the hollow near enough energy to regenerate or recover from the fatal injuries his remaining sixty percent blast would ensue. It was actually brilliant logic and reasoning. Yet, the then stronger hollow had charged it's full power blast to counter Chad's weakened one. It looked like even then Chad's blast was easily overpowering his opponents until they both lost stability and exploded.

Now the fight seemed like it would be endless, yet Chad knew he was getting weaker since his body was being forced to over-compensate for the weaker attacks, while Ferenan was receiving extra energy to keep him afloat _in the black_. Chad's energy.

The hollow eyed Chad with contempt. The fact that he was _actually_ beginning to be forced _into the red _reiatsu-wise, despite 'taxing' the human's reiryoku wasn't lost on him. It infuriated him. Why was a human this powerful?

"_Time to change gears,"_ he thought, tilting his head.

"_Cuerno de Picador!" _(Spanish for: Picador's Horn)

His horns extended out of his head at an impossible to guess speed, leaving Chad only having time to move two feet to the side, resulting in a piercing goring by the hollow's left horn in the side of Chad's left oblique.

"**EexXCceElLlLeENntT!"(Translation: "Excellent!") **His horns formed the words out of raw vibration, and used said vibrations to cut the left horn out of a small bundle of muscles that was keeping stuck in Chad's torso.

"However, Chad grabbed the left horn before they both began their retraction, and punched with all the power he had, channeling this blast _into _the extended horn, destroying it in the process. If his horn's doubled as inductors, then Chad was adding a third use. It was like one of those 'unintended uses' that products say on their packaging that could result in the destruction of the product. This third particular use was a conductor. The attack flew straight to Ferenan's head in an effectively point blank explosion.

Chad jumped up to a tree branch, tanking the pain of his recent goring and the power of the hollow's sloppy vibrations.

"My energy was still taken, but since I destroyed one of his horns, he didn't get to receive it just then. I've noticed he's finally breaking some sweat, so I just have to keep destroying his horns in my attacks to-" before he was interrupted by a quiet voice causing his eye to almost pop out of his head.

"-make sure that when you attack, he doesn't receive any energy. Then, make him keep regenerating so that he gets even more tired. Oh you already figured out that part of Orihime's plan," observed the voice.

Chad almost fell out of the tree at this twist.

"A-Ayame?"

"Ah you remembered my name!" she said with a smile, and touched Chad's wound as the pain level of it lowered a bit.

It was true that Chad had been introduced to all the Rikka before during his and Orihime's training with Yoruichi, but never really talked to them one on one. They were always too busy messing with Orihime.

Suddenly Chad regained his composure. "Wait! What are you doing away from Inoue? ! Why are you healing me? She needs y-"

"-you to listen to what I have to say. And I can't heal without Shun'ō. I'm just putting some reiatsu into it to sooth it. Now please listen," finished Ayame again with a determined face this time. Chad thought how out of all the Rikka, she seemed the most like Orihime(whenever said Rikka wielder wasn't going crazy with her imagination). He then noticed that the Rikka was beginning to flicker with light. A little more than usual. She would have gotten there sooner, but didn't want to risk being spotted by Aloban. It would ruin everything.

"Orihime doesn't have much time left before the enemy's ability gets to her, or the enemy gets to her itself. She's waiting for me so the quicker I tell you, the quicker I can go back. Even when that hollow was explaining her ability, she was worrying about you since she sensed your reiatsu steadily falling. She not only wanted me to send a message but to share the method she used against her opponent who used a comparable ability, but you've already figured out a similar solution. So now here's the actual plan she came up with,"

"Fine then. Lets hear it," said Chad. Ayame's tiny demure hand brushed off his giant last finger that was holding onto his gored oblique..

**Meanwhile in the clearing outside the forest  
>1:12 AM<strong>

Orihime was barely managing to dodge Fátima's offensive fury. It seemed the hollow was still injured by the effects of Shiro Ana after all.

_"I can't believe it, she's actually almost blinded for real, just because I messed up the spell?" _thought Orihime, wide-eyed, and jumping out the way of an incoming crash landing stomp from Fátima in the air.

**Hadō #2: Shiro Ana** (白穴, _White Hole_)**. **The second offensive technique in Soul Society's arsenal of standardized kidō. It's purpose was to momentarily blind opponents with a strong beam of light produced from any part of the user's body that takes the form of a concentrated beam or wave. Usually fired from fingers. However, Orihime had messed up the firing form, splitting her index finger and middle form apart. The correct form, which is the same form used for many other Hadō and Bakudō spells were having those two fingers right next to each other.

This caused all the energy to flow directly to those two fingertips, as opposed to firing one complete blast from both combined fingers. The two effectively smaller, more concentrated beams of light, ironically made contact with both of the hollow's eyes, almost frying them. Yet somehow she still had some form of sight.

The faliure of Shiro Ana was the best blessing of this fight to keep her from getting sliced to bits. Honestly, if not for Shiro Ana, Orihime would be attached to the other end of an elbow blade about now.

She ran up to the hollow, ignoring all the pain she was feeling, and knowing the foreboding punishment that would come for continuing to fight like this. She realized, the only reason it _felt_ like the sedative was doing this(AKA ripping her apart from the inside out), was because she was simply refusing to pass out, and it wasn't meant to kill her in the first place, but knew it could if she kept resisting. She just had to hold on for a little while longer until Ayame returned.

"Shō!" she shouted pushing the hollow straight into a charging Tsubaki who used Koten Zanshun without kotodama.

If her attacks were getting weaker, she just had to be creative to find ways to recreate that power.

Fátima gasped as her back was slashed. A shallow cut yet, it was just the start. Tsubaki used the opening his first attack caused to do a continuing Koten Zanshun swarm attack like a bee, causing multiple cuts all the hollow's body.

The more the hollow had to regenerate, the more it's reiatsu would go down. Yet Orihime wasn't fully relieved by her successive attacks with Koten Zanshun since cuts where what Fátima's regeneration was meant for. They would take reiatsu to heal, but it wouldn't require the same draining from before used to restore her limbs. What she needed to prove her theorem was her full power, but she didn't have it. All she needed now was-

"Ayame-!" shouted Orihime shocked that the Rikka had returned in a flash of light of her own free will. No re-summoning required on Orihime's part.

"I gave the message to Sado-san Orihime," relayed Ayame with her head inside her hood. She also told Orihime some details that Chad had told her which intrigued Orihime to no end.

"Then this just might work!" said Orihime to Ayame who nodded in response.

Tsubaki's cuts were getting shallower and shallower until they could be classified as scratches, and when he stopped, he returned to Orihime as well. That's when she saw it up close for herself. Ayame and Tsubaki were both violently flickering with light.

"Hey Orihime are we doing this or what?" Tsubaki didn't sound his usual energetic self.

Orihime answered by looking over at the forest.

**In said forest**

Frustated Ferenan. A short simple alliteration to describe the hollow's current predicament. The human had forced him once again to be on the defensive.

Chad hadn't just asked if his horns were a little fragile for taunt session's sake, and instead had tricked the hollow into giving away a potentially exploitive weakness.

He got up on his feet from where he was knocked back from the blast. It had knocked off his extended right horn as well, and cracked his mask. Cracked it _again_.

Suddenly he felt a piercing sensation and looked down. An object had pierced right through his torso. He was terrified to learn that it was his right horn that had broke off in the explosion. It was weaker from being so close to the blast that had ended his left horn, but it had still be strong enough to pierce him.

"You know, I don't really get how that super long horn came out your head. That's why it really caught me off guard in the first place. But even broken horns have uses I guess. It's pretty sharp to pierce through you just from throwing(even though I threw it with my right arm). I didn't really know what was going to happen," observed Chad walking up to the hollow.

_"His entire demeanour changed! He's not taking me seriously anymore," _growled Ferenan.

"I warned you not to look down on me Yasutora Sado!" yelled Ferenan making to punch, but Chad caught the punch dead on.

"_Inoue's general plan sounds good and all, but I realize now that I can finish him right now with my full power since he hasn't regenerated his horns yet and then do what she wants...No I have to do it right. I have a feeling it's the only way to take care of this all at once," _he thought, yelling and swinging with all his might, slamming the hollow down behind him and punching him into the exterior of the forest. He quickly followed.

**The clearing outside the forest**

Ferenan was blasted out the forest by Chad's energy-less punch from his right arm.

Chad soon ran out the forest, holding his side.

_"Sado-kun!"_ thought Orihime at a distance. Now all she had to do was-

"AAACK!" was the sound that came out her mouth, accompanied with blood. Lots of the red stuff also was coming out her stomach where the seedling had once been.

Vaguely seeing Chad also taking an seemingly invisible attack to the top of his shoulder as his arm de-materialized while he fell forward towards the Earth.

There were no words for the feelings stabbing at her mind right now. Was she screaming, crying? Who knows. There was however, a voice that seemed to have all the answers.

**"Oh my. You two were actually losing to these humans. In the first place you were supposed to incapacitate them. Knock them or something and subdue them. Not engage in a grandiose battle royale, and then have enough nerve left over to lose. So I hope you understand when I say that I just haaaad to step in." **It was hard to tell whether the speaker was upset or simply amused.

Falling on her back, Orihime saw the source of the disembodied voice. Aloban Vibrerra.

He had his vascular tail split into two, one half pointing at Chad, and the other and her. The vibrations from his tail were broadcasting into the night like giant amplifiers. Yet there was another sound that interrupted the silence.

"ALOBAN! I TOLD YOU NOT TO INTERFERE IN MY FIGHT YOU BASTARD!"

"Hmph. Watch that language, Fátima. Oh, and you called it a 'fight'? If anything, I _do_ apologize for interrupting your own slaughtering girl. And how rude of you. When you insult somebody at least look in their general direction. It's a new concept called eye contact. Have you heard of it? It's the basis for any conversation. That should have been one of the first things they taught you right? Though I hear you're having some vision complications? I could destroy your eyes with a concentrated sonic blast so you could regenerate them you know. It's pretty brutal to have to gouge them out yourself. It's much less messy with my method. Either way I'm going to ask you right now to turn around and actually face me when you insult me. It's only the proper thing to do." Smugness echoed into the sky.

"Aloban! How dare you! How dare you interrupt my battle!" shouted an enraged Ferenan.

"Oh dear, not another one, but at least this one has a little more manners. Now if you don't mind we're going to do something a little unorthodox. Instead of continuing our little _raid_, we're collecting our 'catch' and returning. Any objections?" asked the obsidian hollow crossing his arms.

Orihime watched this all play out lying on her back. Everything was becoming cold, and it wasn't just her freezing sweat which had reached about absloute zero by now. Fate was paying her back for actions against Fátima as her own vision began to fade to black. She felt something moving in her stomach somehow despite all the destroyed nerve endings. Then she saw it. The black seedling had completely grew back and was budding into a complimentary colored six petal flower.

There was a world in which only light existed. But one day this world was attacked by the darkness which absorbed all the light to only to use it to make it grow more. All corners were filled, but only one thing remained. The only pure untainted object left was the realm's core. Floating in the center, it contained all the light that had ever existed in tenfold amounts, but was covered and protected by an impenetrable barrier. As the darkness discovered this anomaly and closed in on the covered core, it did the impossible, cracking the barrier. Yet that one crack was all the light needed to shine through the darkness, pushing it back to corners of the world.

The flower wilted.

Suddenly a spark. She didn't know what it was. It was like her body was on autopilot. Being controlled for a specific purpose.

Aloban concluded his one-sided ultimatum. "Oh? No objections? Very well then. So what are you waiting for? Hurry up an-Hmm?" Something had caught his eye.

A brittle Santen Kesshun flew up to Aloban's altitude. Orihime controlling it still laying on her back with her hand raised, looking the hollow straight in the eyes.

"So you have a little fight left in you after all child? Very well, I'll entertain you a bit," he said stabbing his tail half that was pointed her her previously and piercing through the shield.

A rippling bluish-white energy blast flew up into the hair heading straight towards the shield. Then the following happened in what seemed like an instant as time slowed down.

Fátima did a full charge at Aloban kicking at the shield with her long legs, breaking it further while Ferenan had launched his tounge, after the energy blast, trying to destroy it.

Orihime maneuvered Santen Kesshun so that Ferenan's tongue went through the shield instead, the energy blast missing it's feigned target in the first place.

"Santen Kesshun, I reject."

Energy pulsed into the broken shield, trapping parts of all three hollows inside of it.

"Is this all? I was expecting something novel," responded Aloban before he made to vibrate his tail, but Ferenan disliking the treatment his tongue was receiving vibrated his tongue as well.

Abruptly the shield glowed a successively brighter and brighter yellow, the Rikka at the three corners it doing seizure inducing flashing. Much different from the weak flashing they were doing previously.

"What the devil? !" said Aloban in shock, vibrating his tail faster in vein as the shield closed tighter around the half of his tail, and moved all three body parts; Fátima's leg, his tail half , and Ferenan's tongue, all together near a corner of the shield so that they were touching. The conflicting vibrations generated by Ferenan and Aloban disoriented all three. At this, the shield starting spinning, exponentially faster with each revolution until it was swinging all the hollows in the air at a mind-numbing pace.

At this Orihime got up. The plant's regeneration had conveniently closed up the wound and thus stopped the bleeding, making it easier on her.

She rose, and saw Chad who was standing, arm re-materialized. How else could he have fired that blast. Always trust in Chad to pull through with support, even if it seems like he's finished.

He raised his arm slowly making a gesture, as if struggling to tell her something.

_"Huh?" _thought Orihime_._

It morphed into a cheesy thumbs-up, causing all the freezing sweat on Orihime's skin to collectively drop one more centimeter.

"Are you ready Sado-kun! ?" she shouted across the field to him.

He simply nodded in response, charging up another energy blast. There was something different about this one, Orihime noticed. Instead of charging up in his wrist and flowing up his forearm, his entire arm was glowing with the blue energy. _"Perfect," _she thought.

Chad had forced himself to get up off the ground. He wasn't going to let himself lose here. Not now. With Ferenan's node now completely destroyed, and his damaged shoulder from Aloban's attack, he sucked it up and pulled from the recces of his now non-burdened soul. Even the energy he pulled out during his last ditch attack in his fight with Captain Kyōraku was dwarfed in comparison. Yet similarly to that time, his whole arm became consumed in the white-blue reiatsu. All the blood on his arm actually evaporated from the power he was exhuming. Charging up his power without the node taxing his energy was like wearing twenty pound weights on your legs for a year, then taking them off and jumping and being shocked at how high you can jump.

Orihime's shield turned to face him, still swinging the hollows to the point that there was a blur. Suddenly Santen Kesshun dispelled, and the hollows came flying to him at a breakneck speed. Right then and there before contact, Chad punched harder than he'd ever punched in his short 15+ years of life. The resulting explosion was unrivaled by anything that prior night or this early morning. And as the hollows flew out the resulting smoke in tendrils back up to the spot they had flown from, what else was there but a newly formed, still glowing Santen Kesshun to greet them. It enlarged as the hollows impacted it, instantly bursting down towards it's creator.

""Invisible, infinite void. Formation of the spatial curtain to parry ye defamers. The fabric ebbs 'tween to repel thee," she had said under her breath before the hollows had even impacted the shield. Though after they did and were charging towards her from the sky thanks to her shield, she waited, getting her timing right, and right before they got too close, she stretched her hands out to the sky and yelled out some more defining words for that morning.

"Koten Zanshun-Shō! I reject!" Tsubaki who had already been summoned from earlier, glowed bright from 'Shō' and then exploded with power when the last syllable of his full incantation kotodama ended, traveling at just shy of five times the speed of sound creating who knows how many shockwaves.

However, Santen Kesshun didn't stop mid-plummeting to wait for Tsubaki. No. It collided _into_ the attack to cause even more damage as Tsubaki diffused through the shield, and it continued going down, slamming the hollows into the ground, allowing Orihime to diffuse through the shield as it slammed on top of her.

That whole attack starting from when the hollows impacted the shield was about three and a half seconds.

Orihime opened her eyes. Hollow body parts all around her. If they weren't already annihilated by Chad's punch of death, then they were mutilated by Tsubaki's powerful attack. One particularly long and thick tail, mask fragments, a grayscale arm and leg, blood, and lots more, etc. The shield was up to her knees, with her legs phasing through them in that spot. She stepped up on top of it, and walked on it till she got to the edge and jumped off, landing to the side of it.

"Inoue are you okay? !" yelled Chad, stumbling over with a willfully de-materialized arm.

"Sōten Kisshun, I reject," she responded to Chad's question, putting the shield over her and Chad. While she had this power she would erase everything that happened to them before any of this all happened.

In that world that had been subdued by darkness, that darkness had been closing in on the light, absorbing it and using it to recover from the light's offensive when it shined out through the cracks of the core. As the darkness once again closed in on it's foe, the barrier broke and all the light poured though, vanquishing all traces of the dark cloud forever.

The black flower withered away into spirit particles, and the hole it left was healed subsequently healed.

Chad's right arm, and all the other injuries he's attained that he ignored up to this point, all began healing(there were twenty-four of them. Four of them were serious including his torn oblique and goring injury, the rest ranging from simply 'bad', to 'mild'). His shredded blue shirt revealing some skin healed as well, and the remains of the broken node disappeared into spirit particles like Orihime's healing shield always did to injuries. Chad was more focused on how his _shirt _just got healed. Luckily the coin his Abuelo gave him stayed intact the entire fight. That's one of the reasons why he kept it. For luck.

"Y-you can't be serious," stated a weak voice causing Orihime to look back in alarm.

Fátima's head was being wedged in between the ground and Aloban's chopped off, at the moment squirming tail which was touching the bottom of Santen Kesshun. The enlarged shield pressing down against them, keeping them all in place. Apparently Aloban and Ferenan, being larger, had taken the brunt of Tsubaki's bisection of death, yet Fátima was at the gates of death from Chad's punch even if it had been concentrated on all three hollows at once instead of her specifically.

"'Can't be serious?' There she goes with her quotes of the day again," responded Lily.  
>"What do you think happens to hollows who eat souls and attack the living world?" continued Hinagiku.<br>"This was your destiny from the moment you challenged humanity," finished Baigon.

"Come get your fairy freaks off of me! And tell them to shut up with their 'holier-than-thou' crap! This is why humans are ignorant. Thinking of anything other than themselves as monsters. Humans kill other humans more than anything!"

"'Monsters' are those that destroy innocent souls. Be it human or hollow, and it's not 'girl'," she said wind blowing her hair and wearing an enigmatic expression. "It's Orihime Inoue."  
>"Yasutora Sado," added Chad wearing an equally ambiguous mask.<p>

Aloban was besides himself. With his tail cut off there was no way for him to speak. He and Ferenan(who was KO'ed) were facing away from Fátima thus he was unable to counter both female's inherently flawed arguments in the first place. These foolish partners of his. Plus how did even _he_ get into this mess? The two humans must have coordinated somehow and knew that his brash partners would do anything to stop the them from having anything to do with him. So attacking him drew them all to one spot where the girl was ready for it all. He dared think that they even had managed to figure out his _weakness_. Everything went wrong so fast.

Like a unnoticeable creeping shadow, another uneasy feeling beset the prevailing area. The constant current of the river went off a wavelength. The cardiac pumping of the wind skipped a beat as the breeze gradually, yet in abrupt intervals, changed direction. Time was frozen, and yet while it was, the clouds were parting.

A beam of light shot out of those parted clouds.

Chad barely had time to react. By the time he even began tilting his head up, it was all around him. The wide beam surrounding all within the area of everything that the enlarged Santen Kesshun covered, Chad almost got cut out of the edge of the beam himself. Gaining composure he hit the side of it only to by blasted back.

"Inoue what i-!" he shouted turning to face his friend only to see she had passed out, slumped on top of her shield on her back which then dispelled.

"Inoue!" he shouted in fear at seeing the grave spectacle. He could see the whites of her eyes, and her scattered hairpins were flashing and twisting into deformed shapes.

What felt like a mini-earthquake happened, but instead of the ground shaking, it was ripped out of the earth itself, and began floating up in the air.

"'You're...noisy...stop...yelling...and...roll...over...and...die...already.'" Chad looked over at the voice with wide eyes. The voice talked slow, with lots of seconds between each word as they began rising exponentially faster.

"That's...what...I'd...say...if...you...were...a...hollow...But..you're a human. If you die,..you'll just come out your body...and still be alive. There's no hope for you,...now," the voice went on. Chad continued listening, but the words were getting hazier and hazier. He couldn't tell if his consciousness was fading or if it was the speaker's instead, affecting their words. By now, they were reaching the clouds.

Getting past that floating water vapor, Chad at some point had fallen on his back on the ground looking up to see the giant white ominous slow moving hands with holed nails grabbing at them. The line between reality and the dream-like state of unconsciousness blurred and became one.

"You should hope to die and disappear right here and now, because...if not, then your fate...is sealed. You're...already...be...in..._their_ clutches," finally finished Fátima, breathing shallow breaths before she seemingly stopped breathing altogether.

The hands cupped the underside of the earth that had been ripped out the ground, raising it up further into the air where the cracked open sky was waiting for their return. The hands disappeared into the dark void, and the cracked sky regenerated in resounding shockwaves.

**1:26 A.M.  
>Forecast: Clear skies<br>**The morning was calm.

* * *

><p>Sorry to ruin the mood again, but it's time for a:<p>

**Omake/Side Story:** "Training with Hachi-sensei, part 2/2"

**A couple hours ago, yesterday night;**

"Alright then! Let's begin," said Hachi in response to Tsubaki's complaint.

"Um...it seems like you said that before already," said Orihime sweat dropping.

"Nonsense! Now then try focusing your spiritual energy."

"Huh?" Orihime asked with a blank expression. She was confused by the vague instruction, but it rang a bell.

"Well I assumed you already knew the difference between reiryoku and reiatsu? To put it simply, it's like the difference between energy and power. 'Power' is the amount of 'energy' being actively used. Reiryoku(spiritual '_power_') is the full amount of potential 'energy' a soul has completely, while reiatsu is the 'energy' or 'pressure' that reiryoku exerts during a certain period of time. Thus the term 'spiritual pressure' being used for reiatsu. This all means it doesn't matter how much spiritual power you have, it's all about who is able to draw out the most spiritual pressure. A person who has less spiritual power than their opponent, but generates more spiritual pressure during their fight, could beat that opponent. Though of course, fights are entirely circumstantial and you shouldn't judge opponents just based off these factors, but they are very important factors.

You've used the **Reishūkaku **ball before so you know how to draw on reiryoku. Now like I said before, you must achieve this same feat without relying on the ball. Have you ever drawn out all your reiatsu before? Hmm, ok that's not the right wording...Alright I've got it. Have you ever fully exerted your spiritual pressure as 'high' as you can? You've been to the world called 'Soul Society' correct?

Orihime nodded in response, but before she could wonder how Hachi would know such a thing, he continued.

"So while you were there, you've probably felt stronger opponents exert their spiritual pressure? Or even just feeling the power of their subconsciously released pressure in general? A common practice to subdue weaker enemies is to overwhelm them with spiritual pressure. There are entire techniques for this. In ranging from slowing their movements, to extremes where they are paralyzed, pass out or even killed. I want you to exert your spiritual pressure as hard as you can. It's not really 'powering up full power', more than it is simply raising your reiatsu and infusing it with 'emotion' or 'intent'. Bloodlust or killing intent are common examples for this, but aren't necessarily the end all, be all. Even people like Captain Unohana I remember didn't have any killing intent or bloodlust in her pressure, yet her's was one of the strongest I've ever felt," he thought, giving off a uneasy vibe.

Actually the group of Visored watching them from far back were surrounded by uneasy auras as well. They were getting bad vibes from whatever Hachi was saying.

"Eh? But Captain Unohana is so nice, and everyone is so loyal to her," said Orihime remembering her time she spent with Rangiku post Aizen-betrayal when they visited the fourth division to check on the vice captain of the fifth division. The squad members seemed to love their captain so much! "They always did whatever she said anytime, anywhere no questions...asked...," said Orihime going on about the fourth division captain, but trailed off when she saw Hachi begin to sweat nervously.

_"Was it something I said? Maybe I better do what he asked me," _thought Orihime generating her own nervous sweat, before standing up. "Exerting my full spiritual pressure? I don't think I've ever done anything like that."

"Oh? You've never seen how strong you can get?"

"Well besides, when I first awakened the Rikka, there was a big explosion but I didn't really pay attention to it. I remember feeling like something was surging through me, but I never really thought of it as energy or power. I just knew I had to beat that hollow to save Tatsuki-chan," said Orihime with a solemn expression at the memories of her best friend being in pain.

"First awakened? Well since then your power has better stabilized. Especially now that you have Tsubaki back. Thus you have the best conditions now to do what I'm asking. Use that feeling you felt then as your 'emotion'. For people first learning to control their spiritual powers, they use 'emotion' as catalysts to help them progress faster. So use that emotion of 'determination to protect and get stronger' to draw out as much power as possible right now. You've already showed that 'emotion' since you've been here, now use it," said Hachi motivating the girl.

"Right!" responded the Rikka wielder. Hachi had already commented on her power once she had all six Rikka out at the same time, but to fully exert her reiatsu? To her it still seemed like 'powering up'. Then she realized what Hachi meant in that one can exert reiatsu, yet not be at full power at all.

Closing her eyes she thought back on how she felt when she she learned her brother had turned into a monster, a hollow...She thought back to when her classmates and her best friend Tatsuki were controlled by a hollow and there was nothing she could do.

The Shun Shun Rikka began flying around her. Splitting up into groups of three and flying around her in an 'X' shape with her in the middle.

She thought how she would never let any of her friends suffer like that again. Not as long as she had the power.

She began actively drawing on her reiryoku similar to her time at the Shiba's. It was easy, but now instead of putting it into the ball, since she had no object to put it into it channeled through her soul, exerting pressure just like Hachi said it would.

The air abruptly became very dense and weighted around the girl, as reiatsu began emanating from her and the Rikka increased in speed.

As the pressure built and built, it became visible, making the girl's body glow with golden-yellow energy, and the Rikka began glowing the same color, thus creating the look of a luminescent spiraling 'X' surrounding her.

A swirling tempest of white-yellow energy surrounded her as she became completely enveloped in the golden-yellow aura from before.

A look of concentration was on her face, and her fists clenched together.

Ichigo and Hiyori stopped mid sword clash, and their heads snapped over in Orihime's direction. Hiyori slid off her mask by nodding her head to the side, and Ichigo's mask cracked.

"Inoue? !" exclaimed Ichigo in wonder.

"False alarm baldy!"

"Wha-mMMMMhhh!" shouted Ichigo as Hiyori slapped the sandal _down his throat._

"Don't get distracted in a fight you idiot, even if your opponent acts like they're distracted along with you!"

"Baah!" shouted Ichigo spitting out the open-toed footwear, allowing Hiyori to catch it before looking at it with horror.

"Don't act like you weren't distracted too! You mouth was hanging all the way on the ground just now," taunted Ichigo wiping his mouth.

"That's it carrot-top! You got your slobber all over my sandal! You already cut the other one in half! Now I don't have any more!"

"What are you talking about, you have a closet full of the things. You really need to stop frequenting Urahara Shoten. I know he's 'geta-boshi-san' now, but you can't go and steal all his bootlegged footwear," said Shinji sitting on a spire to the side and picking his nose before getting the bile covered sandal thrown at his face. After which he sort of faded from the general area to meet with the rest of the Visored on the ground watching Orihime.

"First of all you need to learn about personal space! You don't shove _shoes_ down people's _throats _snaggletooth! It's unsanitary!"

" I _said _stop calling me 'that' you littl-Wait! 'Unsanitary'? Just what are you trying to say about my foot hygiene? ! You're sounding like a little prick and it's pissing me off!" she shouted swinging her sword to her side.

"Then do something about it!" shouted Ichigo to the dirty blonde Visored as he donned his mask who then slid her mask back on in return. He had definitely adapted to Hiyori's personality.

The tempest finished swirling around Orihime and dispersed. She slowly opened her eyes to reveal they were no longer brown, but marigold-yellow with reiatsu as her golden aura rose and grew off of her to create the shape of a sharp pointed six petal flower.

_"Shape manifestation!" _thought Hachi in surprise. It was not common that visible reiatsu actually managed to take a shape. "Alright, it's time," said Hachi standing up, making Orihime's eyes widen.

Suddenly, conflicting spiritual pressure dragged down the air even more as Orihime realized it was coming from the man with cropped pink hair himself.

Slowly, but surely he began glowing orange with power smashing against Orihime's pressure.

"Now pay attention. A person as smart as you should be able to follow on," said Hachi as Orihime nodded in response.

"You've brought out your reiatsu, so now do what you did with the **Reishūkaku **ball, yet focus your reiryoku out your palm instead of the ball, like so," he said generating an orb of orange energy. It floated in his hand. A little darker than his orange-yellow barriers.

"This is pure untainted reiryoku, now go ahead and-WOAH!" he shouted wide-eyed and jerking his head to the side as a wave of golden energy flew past him. It flew towards the huddled group of Visored and the silver haired one with piercings swatted it away and yelled some angry words Orihime couldn't hear.

"O-oh my gosh! I'm so sorry! Hachi-sa-I mean sensei," shouted Orihime in shock with her hands at her mouth. Her reiatsu had subsided. Suddenly she jerked both her hands away from her face to her sides in massive alarm after thinking that another blast might come out her hands any second.

Hachi very slowly looked looked up, revealing that he had energetic stars in his eyes.

"Orihime-san! That was so great!"

"E-eh? But I lost c-ontrol..,"

"No! This is great! Nobody has ever focused their reiryoku so quickly to do it on the first try. Even if you had prior experience at the Shiba's, it's still unprecedented to do _this,"_ he said gesturing to the damaged area near the still freaking out Visored group, "on your first actual try! Even if you couldn't control it, you shot it perfectly!"

A certain silver-haired Visored took issue with that comment. "'Perfectly' my a-"

"Oh~? Such acute hearing you have there Kensei-san!" interrupted Hachi looking back at Kensei in with glowing eyes.

"That's funny seeing as you also can hear me from all the way over there," deadpanned the silver haired man Hachi had called 'Kensei'.

"What's up with Hacchin acting so weird! It's because of the stupid girl," whined a girl in a white jumpsuit and green hair in a pout.

"MASHIRO, I TOLD YOU TO QUIT WHINING!" yelled the Kensei.

Regaining his composure, Hachi continued "Orihime-san. I told you before. Kidō is accomplished by manipulating the base reiryoku(like what I materialized into the orange orb I just showed you) into the shapes and compositions of the various spells and techniques. It's an art really in that respect. The purpose of incantations is to assist in the reiryoku's molding into the constraints of the specific spells. I've already demonstrated the different types of spells to you when explaining earlier, but let's talk about your powers right now.

With your abilities, you're going to have to be very creative and innovative to fight against beings like arrancar. In whatever training you do after this, always find unique solutions to every new situation you come across.

Now," he said walking over to Orihime. "Let me start you off by teaching how to mold some basic kidō spells for everyday battle, since fighting is what you want to do correct? These will act as supplements in your training. So let's go," he said forming another large orb of orange reiryoku in his hand.

"All right," responded the girl forming a aura like energy in her hand before it psuedo-stabilised into a flickering golden sphere. "So what's next Hachi-sensei?" said Orihime with a warm smile which Hachi reciprocated.

**END **

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note(should be called 'Author's Novel'. You'll see what I mean):<strong>

**Chapter Started**: Oct 17, 10:48 AM  
><strong>Chapter Finished...in the knick of time: <strong>Dec 31, 11:59:56 AM o_0(finished with 4 seconds left to spare)...alright the jig is up. Finished this Jan 1, 12:41 AM. 41 minutes past my deadline. *bangs head on the computer scree-oh man my computer almost cut OFF! *hits save button* Phew. EDIT: *Puts story up*...Woah this website says it was updated on 12/31. Yes! That makes it official! Foolish atomic clock! You can't deny the accuracy of the website!  
><strong>Revisions: <strong>N/A and not beta'd either.

General Section:

*-I put an asterisk next to that line in the chapter about Bakudō 39 for a reason. Though the chapter is so long you most likely forgot where the asterisk is. Does any remember Urahara's little comparison of 'Bakudō 39: Enkosen' to 'Santen Kesshun' in chapter six? In this chapter Orihime's basically like "You think Santen Kesshun can be replaced by the likes of that garbage kidō spell? Ha."

So how about that? The A.U.R.(Acquisition of Unwavering Resolve) arc is over. Hmmm. Let's just call it the Resolve Arc. Now the real reason this chapter came so late(*gets shot*) is because I published chapter seven too early as mentioned in that Author's Note. Won't happen again(actually it is with the publishing of this chapter. I have to get back on schedule after this). Thus, this story is on temp-hiatus  as of January, 12 2012. **Check my profile for future updates to the story's status and for full explanation for why the story is on temp-hiatus.**

**Chaps 1-8: Expository Arc: 'Acquisition of Unwavering Resolve'(aka 'Resolve Arc')**

**Chaps 9-?: Main Arc made out of multiple mini-arcs: (Name of the arc revealed next chapter and mini-arcs to be revealed when the time comes for each one)**

**Chad: **I'm sorry Chad basically got partially Kensei'd(part of his fight was off pannel...oh you didn't notice? Then forget everything you just read and continue), but his fight turned out to be easier to write than I thought it would be. In the future I'll give his fights more screen time. He was pretty awesome and inventive with doing what he did to Ferenan's horns as payback for getting gored. His thumbs-up I got from the time he did it to Karin and she was all: "SO LAME!". I figured it's a gesture Chad does all the time so I brought it back. Also, that's him passing out at the end there, dreaming about what he's actually seeing. It's complicated, but a similar event happened to me before.

**Orihime:** I don't know if you guys realize this yet, but the Rikka kind of have their own free will at the moment. Even after Orihime first awakened them and she passed out. They were still up and floating talking about her AFTER she passed out, then they went back into hairpins. This explains why I allowed Ayame to 're-summon herself'. Futhermore on the free-will topic, during the arrancar arc, she actually in the canon, sent Ayame and Shun'ō to heal Chad's arm from halfway across Karakura which I depicted in chapters 4 and 5. They were shown in a panel healing him(note: healing him without Orihime) and in the next manga chapter when he went to confront D-Roy, trying to persuade him to finish getting healed.

What's up with Orihime's ability to manipulate Santen Kesshun so easily? Well she passed through Hachi's supposedly hax barrier like nothing which she compared to her own(what's that tell you about Santen Kesshun's potential?), which means it's not much of a stretch that she would begin manipulating her own ability similarly. Plus I didn't pull it out of nowhere(see chapter seven). Also, I never did touch on the 'regenerative shield' thing, but come on. Yammy cracked her shield during their fight. It looked like it was just begging to regenerate. Like it had the ability, but Orihime just didn't have to resolve and knowlege about the dynamic abilities of Santen Kesshun at the time. She didn't know what to do with her powers at the time, she wanted to get stronger. The incident with Yammy made her know where exactly to improve at, as did her mini-training session with Hachi. Plus, if you haven't noticed, her imagnation is crazy, so she's pretty creative.

People might not think Orihime is capable of fighting, but even in the manga and anime when fighting the third seat shinigami, she showed she was able to dodge his attacks, and in the fights in this chater, she has improved tenfold. Back in Soul society, it took her all day to heal Jidanbo's arm(which they had to re-attatch before even healing). Then during the Yammy fight, she heals Chad's arm much quicker. In the canon Orihime gets to the point where she revived Loly and Menoly from the dead. That's alot of advancement for a girl who only had her powers a couple months. Kūkaku Shiba and Hachi in canon already alluded that she had great kidō potential. The former told her straight to her face, the latter was in a covert way because Orihime owned his barrier. Even so, she messed up Hado 2 in this chapter(speaking of which did you guys like it?). I'm trying to say I'm not pulling this development out of nowhere even if this is AU. I plan to expand on her powers with the 'shared consciousness' things I brought up in the early chapters. I mentioned it in this chapter and there's a hint to future development of it.

The reason her final attack was so strong was because she was using her life force. As was Chad, similar to his situation against the Squad Eight captain. My extended metaphor with the "world of light", was basically symbolizing the poison's effect on Orihime. The darkness was the poison. It had infected everything and was finally closing in on her soul sleep as **Fátima **has mentioned, yet in that instant when she was on the ground and something just clicked, that was the effect of her soul sleep being tampered with when the light shined through the crack and shined through the darkness, bursting it to the corners of the 'world'. After Orihime's super attack on the hollows, the poison had re-adapted to her reiatsu, and was about to really corrupt her soul sleep, but the barrier cracked and all the light shined through, destroying the darkness, as in she was using her full life force for that last Sōten Kisshun and with it, she rejected the poison/sedative once and for all, finally taking the off the strain it put on her body. I've been thinking whenever somebody's life force is messed with in Bleach? _Things happen._Ulquiorra blows a hole in Ichigo's chest? H2 horned mask Ichigo appears. Final Getsuga Tensho? Nuked Aizen, and made Ichigo lose his shinigami powers, as in he dumped all the power out his soul sleep at once, all without killing spiritual body. Pretty impressive. By_ things happening_, I mean it's to be expected. You're messing with the very core of the soul's life. It's going to have defense mechanisms. It's analogous to real life where people enter fight or flight mode and have super adrenaline bursts and do crazy things like lift cars to get the tire off somebody or something.

I hope to explain more of Orihime's progress in the _'Training with Hachi-sensei'_ segments in the future. Now onto some character profiles. Wait I forgot something.

**Tsubaki: **His Vegeta reference. That is all(actually there's one more).

**Trivia:** Everything in this chapter was exactly one hour long, content-wise. You mad distorted time perception?

Character Profiles: The Hollow Trio  
><span>(to be followed up in a later Author Note)<span>

I fear coughknowcough in this chapter that I just made the OC hollows a bunch of screaming and flat characters, and that reading these descriptions you'll be like. "o_0 Who are these character's he's talking about." Rest in mind though that these are my concepts for the characters in general. Of course I haven't fully developed all of this yet. Plus, me developing them any more in this chapter is an automatic 10,000+ words added to the chapter(Just saying. I have problems with over explaning concepts in the story okay. lol) I'm going to explain them the best I can without spoiling the plot in case their time in the story as significant characters that get any screen time is over.

**Fátima ****Aragón: **It sucks that Orihime stole the limelight from her development, but I only have myself to blame. (I still blame Orihime though, j/k). For the sake of grossly overgeneralizing, where Aloban is calm and collected, Ferenan is 'proud' and logical, then this girl is the hothead of the group. Brash, illogical, seemingly instinctive, yet has highly systematic technique and abilities at the same time. I love her **'Glotón Semilla'** ('Donyoku no shushi', Spanish for: _"Gluttonous Seed"_, Japanese for _"Seed of Greed"_)". It has me written all over it. A certain aspect of **Fátima** is actually crucial to the next arc (if I can magically write it fast enough *gets shot*). It's alluded to in the chapter. I grudgingly put a glaring hint(s) in. I felt that if I didn't do it, then you guys would feel like I'm pulling this plot aspect out of nowhere when it finally comes. If I explained her concepts anymore, there will be spoilers. (Oh and did you guys love that super-long annoying description of her or what?...I should probably fix that o_0)

Further Details: At first the group of hollows were all guys by default(just how my mind works). Then I was like. "This is boring, and becoming a sausage-fest! We need another girl!" Thus her name became **Fátima(**theres a nice backstory to this name for you history buffs, but it's Portugeuse/Moorish for those who don't care).Her surname is actually a funny story that'll be developed later if I decide to bring the hollows back for a significant role or not. Anyway, '**Aragón**' is the Aragonese pronunciation for 'Aragon'(no accent mark). Aragon is a autonomous community in Spain. If I do bring her back it's Orihime herself who will reveal why I specifically chose that surname. It's actually a pretty superficial reason. Anyway. when trying to think of her character design, I based it off of a race of aliens called 'Hork-Bajir' from my cherished childhood novel series 'Animorphs'. lol. Even her specifically having two forward facing blades is significant to her being female. But really though, I didn't just copy the design. I changed things up a bit, obviously her having a mask is a change, the beanpod tail, the whole plant theme she has going on, thorns instead of blades, etc. If she was an humanoid arrancar, she would look only a couple years older than Orihime as Orihime herself mentioned about her 'young voice".

**Aloban Vibrerra**(pronounced "Ah-low-bahn Vee-bre-rrah", you have to roll the double R's since it's Spanish): (See the end of chapter seven for the full description of his unique tail. Didn't know where to put it in this chapter because it seemed redundant. Also why I said read the previous chapter before this one.)Now to Aloban. This guy is smug with three capital S's. He could care less of anybody's opinion of him. How many times did I have to say smug in reference to this guy in the chapter? He loves to study how things work. Is easily intrigued, but covert in his showing of extreme interest. Refined, sophisticated and 'polite'(as in gives you a wonderful compliment that actually insults you in seventeen and a half different ways). Another main trait is his quaintness. Lastly is something I hope to develop in the future: I've thought of him a a moral relativist. A nihilist to be exact.

Further Details: Yeah, I pretty much pulled a Kubo and didn't fully explain his ability. I didn't see a place for him to explain his ability and the chapter already seemed overcrowded with explanation. I didn't want to resort to using narration to explain an entire ability, but I felt it's possible to get the basic gist. I know if I were a reader, I'd want to know exaclty what he did to Orihime and Chad in his attack on them, so yeah I'm hypocritical. When thinking about his character design I thought of another race of aliens in 'Animorphs' called the Andalites. These aliens are-...wait I don't want to start ranting into my fandom for a children's series. That's what PMs are for of course. lol. So yeah, I got the body structure from Andalites. Aloban isn't super buff looking like Ferenan or Bulbous G(the hollow Chad fought when he first got his powers). instead he is a little more muscular than an Andalite, but is also lacking the extra two legs, stalk eyes, and the whole centaur theme**(I'm laughing at how this must sound to somebody who never read the books I'm talking about)**. For the final touch I made him super dark, I mean pitch black. Then I was at a loss. I needed something random. What do I do? Add a giant tail. it just needed to be there. Tails make everything better. Andalites had tails, but I wanted something different of course.

**Ferenancio 'Ferenan' ****Drenajería:**(I know how to, but I don't feel like typing out how to pronounce this. lol If anyone wants to seriously know, shoot me a message):

Ferenan is a proud hollow who is pleased with his abilities, yet not necessarily arrogant. Eager to gain power, and is very 'academic'. Hates being insulted and likes to test opponents and see what the are capable of. Loves the challenge of a stronger opponent. He's cautious, observant and resourceful. He knows he isn't the strongest, but he still has pride. He hates when people underestimate him. That can be interpreted as a 'subconcious insecurity problem' to a person like Chad on the outside looking in, but it's something more complex than that. He simply wants respect and wants his opponents to know he is stronger than them and understand their plight. After he feels he has proven himself he doesn't try to drag the fight out any longer. He's agnostic toward's life's(or afterlife's rather) meaning.

**'Bobina Sangre'** (血'Ketsueki indakuta', Spanish for _"Blood coil"_, Japanese for _"Blood Inductor"_)" is the name of his ability. This is the science nerd coming out in me okay? I based it off of a method of wireless energy(electricity) transfer called 'Resonant Inductive Coupling'. Hope you...enjoyed it...unless you hate explanations. lol

Further Details: Origin of the guy's name. OK what can he do? Transfer energy. Spanish word for transfer? Transfer=transferencia. How does he accomplish this feat? By resonant inductive coupling(for reiatsu instead of electrical power lol). Spanish for resonance? Resonance=resonancia. Sooooo. Ferenancio= transFERENCIA+resoNANCIA. It's almost as if he's simply draining the energy from his opponent. Wait, what was that? The drainage of energy? Drainage=drenaje, energy=energía, so Drenajería=Drenaje+energia.

**Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc. (On temp-hiatus. Go to my profile to see why. Also check for whenever I update the release date for the next chapter)**

Next Chapter Title: TBA next chapter(ha, had to do it, sorry)


	9. Gaolbreak: The Collaboration

New arc is new. Welcome to the "Satellite mini-arc" *fanfare*. It's actually one of the mini-arcs I was talking about in previous author's notes that are part of a grander arc. This 'grander' arc is called "Pyramid Syndicate", or "Pirámide Sindicato". More info on it in the Author's Note which is at the bottom as always. This chapter introduces a lot of concepts so bear with me.

We are descending deeper into the AU. So keep in mind that this _is _AU after all. Meanwhile the story will stay on temp-hiatus at least until the weekend of June 9th or the weekend of June 16th at the earliest. 1st of July at the latest. Either of those dates will be when chapter ten lands.

This chapter has "sections" similar to chapter seven. They are called: "Spoils of War", "Flashpoint", and "Mobilization: 0' ". It's sort of set up like a those simple essays you write in elementary school. "Spoils of War" is the 'intro', "Flashpoint" is the 'body', and "Mobilization: 0" is the 'conclusion'.

I don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.

* * *

><p>Gaolbreak: The Collaboration<p>

Spoils of War

**September 10th**

**1:26 AM. What is the blackened world that the white hands retreated into?**

A group of great alabaster hands rose out of the cracked hole their owners had blasted into another dimension before said hole slammed together. In those hands was a large mass of earth, and on top of it were the actual targets they had aimed for, plus a little unintended extra.

One of the creatures with the same long black robes but unique looking mask began to shuffle towards the front. At this, the mindless beings dropped their catch down on a hard platform of sand, and shuffled away.

"Tch! Hurry up and get out the way you fools!" said the different looking one who arrived in the middle of the group before looking down at the targets he heard actually had to be forcefully Negación'd mid-mission. He was sure the information had been distorted so he made his way to the source for further details.

His eyes widened behind his mask at taking in the new sight, before he re-composed himself.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't 'Los Tranquilizantes'. Aloban, what happened? I sensed your squad all leaving an hour ago in one piece and now you come back in well...pieces...Huh?"

The Gillian Menos Grande was saying all this as if taunting, but the absoluteness of the scenario dawned on him the more he had time to process the situation.

His eyes grew in size as he took in a new revelation. The sights of the unconscious forms of Chad and Orihime.

"Just what the hell happened...And..what..are-Are these humans your catch! ? Hey, answer m-...!" the hollow cut himself off at the shocking finality of the situation.

Aloban had in a manner of desperation, managed to roll over from his side onto his back, his eyes frantic. It was then during his previous sentence that the Gillian realized.

Aloban's tail had been completely cut off, rendering him speechless. Of all the body parts to be cut off, that was essentially a death sentence seeing as the mouthless hollow's abilities revolved around it and he lacked any regeneration ability whatsoever.

The other hollows were effectively barely alive or already dead. It was really hard to tell.

There was a stark silence for a while as the gillian looked at the negación'd piece of earth lying on the large sand-platform with the five prone forms scattered on it. He, being in the middle of the makeshift circle of black-cloaked menos grande, abruptly turned wildly towards them.

"Who ordered the rougue negación! It was completely unsanctioned!" Negacións for misions had a defined schedule after all with obvious exceptions of the work being finished expeditiously.

"Hmph," began a voice to the left causing the gillian to home in on it's origin. A different gillian revealed itself out of the camouflage of the similar beasts. He had been silently watching the entire time. This hollow had a unique mask with one horn on either side protruding out horizontally from the forehead area. The mask also sported blood-red distorted symmetrical semi-circle strokes meeting in the middle at their backs between the eye-sockets.

"Unsanctioned? What are you going on about? Los Tranquilizantes had a official scheduled assignment of which I am the monitor, or did you not clearly recognize it was my workers who negación'd them? What are you even doing here Dámian? Once again, you show how obnoxiously nosy you really are. Stay out of my affairs or I will be forced to further 'convince' you to do so".

"Ha! Was that supposed to be a challenge Calibol? ! That's bad coming from someone whose failed mission just became the next big scandal! This'll reach all the way to headquarters for sure!"

Calibol responded in deadpanned earnest. "Headquarters as in Piramidión? Tch, no wait I have to remind myself that this is coming from a failure of a gillian abandoning his post in the middle of work to spy on another mission's progress. This is again because you don't know how to mind your own business. I know you've had this deadbeat job for a long time, but it should be second nature by now. A person like you can never hope to reach adjuchas, but shirking off your responsibilities isn't going to make it any easier on yourself."

"What did you say-? !" began Dámian as he was cut off.

"I thought I had sensed wrong but this-!" began a new voice coming out of the crowd of mindless gillian. His arrival completely threw the two previous speakers off.

"Weeeeeell, this is getting to be quite the little get together now isn't it? I'm glad since things were getting a little dull around here," began another enthused voice appearing from the air.

"Calibol, you can lay-off the ice cold attitude you know. I thought we all agreed that you need to lighten up," began a feminine voice that had just sonido'd into the area.

Three more uniquely masked gillian had entered the fray, each flanked by numerous groups of mindless gillian.

"Great. Now the 'Club: Gossip' gang is all here. Don't you people have anything better to do with your lives than discuss the next 'daily asinine topic'?" complained Calibol.

"Um...nope, can't say _I _do really. Plus it's hard talking to just these guys all the time. It's like talking to a quartz tree," responded the gillian with the previously enthused voice in reference to the mindless group of gillian who had followed him.

"Tch, that was a rhetorical question. Of course hopeless people like yourselves would need all the shallow entertainment they can ge-AUGH!" grunted Calibol as he was cut off mid snark-remark.

Vast spiritual pressure rained down on the group of bantering gillian as every being in the forest-like area were forced down on their knees. It was a very strange sight. Seeing the usual towering form of gillian on their knees that is. It took the sentient gillians all they had just not to loose their sanity, and that feeling itself made them loose even more grip on their minds.

A comparatively small, demure figure ambled in between the masses of skyscraper sized mindless gillian, and abruptly changed pace, using sonído to appear on top of the negación'd earth. It was bipedal; mesomorph upper body and endomorph lower body, with a goldenrod hide. The top of it's mask took the form of an obtuse arrow head. The burgundy markings on its mask accented that unique shape, and continued the entire way down the mask.

"Mhhmmm," it said without opening it's mouth. Observing the prone forms of Los Tranqilizantes, and staring the frantic Aloban right through the eyes as if he weren't even there. He then turned around and observed the fallen forms of Chad and Orihime. The girl was lying on her back near Fátima and he could see the whites of the girl's pupil-less eyes and six minuscule objects which were obviously warped in shape. They normally would be unremarkable if they weren't flickering weakly.

Other than that, both her and the boy had not even a scratch while the hollows seemed broken beyond repair. At this the creature only had two words to say and his spiritual pressure rose exponentially with each one, causing further mind-splitting anxiety to the gillian.

"Enlighten me."

"S-sir! It's Calibol! It's all hi-GWUUUAAAAAAAH!" shouted the gillian Dámian in anguish as near black blood poured from where his arm socket used to be. The offending beast now held the menos's entire arm by only his left fist and looked at it in revulsion.

"Tch, too weak to even take a quick nibble out of. Such salty blood. Tasteless. For your information I was obviously referring to this platform's operator," he said dropping the limb and slowly turning to the aforementioned Calibol in an ominous fashion.

"K-k-ku-, s-SIR!" shouted the gillian mostly in fear as he tried and failed to do some form of salute in his position yet gained some form of official composure before continuing to speak.

"An hour ago, Squad #336 'Los Tranqulizantes'*** led by Aloban Vibrerra came here to my loading platform for their scheduled mission-T-they'd recently been s-switched from 'assimilation' duty to 'harvesting' duty from the natural rotation of jobs. My workers created a kūmon for them at the new range of coordinates provided to us from headquarters, and I, as acting monitor pinpointed the exact coordinates," strangled out Calibol. It was strange hearing a gillian speak this way. It was almost as if he was speaking through the voice of a traditional hollow cry.

"_And?_" asked the creature waiting for the all-important details, no humor in his business-only voice.

If a gillian could feel nauseous, it was happening right then and there to the all the sentient gillian, let alone the mindless ones which were busy screaming in apparent pain just from pressure alone. Calibol was terrified to report the truth to his superior because of how incredibly outlandish it seemed, yet he spoke it anyway.

"It ap-ppears th-at they were somehow confronted and c-consequently defeated-"

"-by these human beings correct? You fools….," the superior creature quickly stated before his calm and cool demeanour was completely shed.

"DISORDERLY CONDUCT OVER A LITTLE INCIDENT! ? Active posts abandoned out of pure IDIOCY! ? I ought to slaughter the lot of you right now and have your remains thrown in 'La Bas-"

BUZZ!-BUZZ!-BUZZ!

Three hollows sonído'd in on the "scene", landing each in a separate tree above the "stage".

At this the creature's collected mood immediately returned as he turned to face the new arrivals who apparently weren't feeling any spiritual pressure at all coming from the beast. They looked at the group of fallen gillian with knowing smugness.

"Ah, excellent timing, but hold that thought please. I need to continue educating my 'pupils' here," said the creature, turning to once again face the exasperated menos.

"But bear with me and follow along anyways you three," he said to the newly arrived hollows as he walked toward Calibol who was now on both his hands _and_knees. The golden beast grabbed at the gillian's black cloak, slowly dragging him like a sandbag over to the sand platform housing the negación'd 'catch'.

"Now then Calibol, tell me, do you see so much as a knick on these humans?"

"N-no s-"

"Precisely. And yet, our resident hollow squad here looks like they went through a emotionally disturbed child's attempt at dissection with a blunt object. Just look at them, they're completely annihilated. Tell me what official protocol is in this type of situation?"

The gillian couldn't even think straight under the pressure of suddenly being put on the spot along with the aforementioned _spiritual _pressure.

"...!" A brief pause of silence and shaking, and then an abrupt crushing backhand to the teeth of Calibol's mask.

"Idiot! It's called pesquisa! A simple pesquisa analysis would have told you these humans have clearly somehow over-exerted their souls while still inside their bodies. Using some form of near suicidal attack to attack the group of destitutes you see before you! Even with only a basic pesquisa, those flickering things surrounding the female and the basic state of her soul should have told you that!"

The trio of hollows in the tree's interests had piqued over the edge at receiving all these details in one convenient rant. They uniformly sonido'd down to the creature's right causing him to take notice.

"Oh that reminds me Calibol. Since you were too busy slacking off, I took the liberty of doing your job for you and dialed up **'El Centro' **before coming here."

The gillian's eyes widened in shocked shame at this information. This was all a misunderstanding! It was not him to blame, but the other idiots!

"But sir-!" he began before feeling a barely noticeable tapping on the right side of his mask.

"Hey there! Knock knock, you beanpole. You should learn to keep your mouth shut by now unless you have some sick kick out of having your teeth bashed in," said a figure knocking on his mask.

Calibol's eyes widened. He couldn't see them from his position, but the triad of hollows had shuffled around to his face which was being held up by his superior. Who did these lower class think they were? !

"Really though, I'm having some massive reconsideration about even becoming a gillian now. I mean they're just so incredibly ugly, and this one's voice is so annoying. _I_ was lucky enough to become **even more beautiful** as a hollow than I already was as a human, but seeing this nastiness up close is too much. Black is _such _an ugly color," remarked the sultry voice of a woman.

"Tch, well with your luck, your _specific_ evolution will just prove to be a watershed moment in gillian aesthetics now won't it? A gillian wearing a cloak with pink and purple polkadots? This I've got to see. Make sure I'm around whenever you attain sentience as a menos. But if you choose not to become a gillian, then that just plays in the _system's _favor in the first place," Annoyed sarcasm and yet truth dripped from this hollow. It had its arms crossed in indifference. The female hollow however somehow missed the sarcasm completely.

"Now, now you three. I advise you not to mock my workers. Don't use my presence as a crutch, because in about two seconds after I explain your task, I'm leaving it all to you. And plus," began the golden hollow facing them as his demeanor once again changed from calm and collected into a stoic one.

"The moment you step foot in my domain for any task, I am effectively your master until your job for me is done. You are no different from these," he said gesturing to the still fallen gillian.

"Why of course Zoréno-sama. It's just so rare to see a self-aware, let alone normal gillian's face up so close after all." _"'No different than these'? How convenient that we've been apparently upgraded to gillian status,"_ thought the hollow who knocked on Calibol's mask in his mind._  
><em>  
>"Stop being such a cheeky brat Tolsá before you get us eaten or something cliché like that," said the indifferent hollow from earlier in nonchalance.<p>

The hollow with the womanly voice had an annoyed expression on her mask.

"Aaah, I'm beginning to think there's some kind of freakish conspiracy of putting two guys and one girl together in the same squad. Just why am I stuck with you two?"

Tolsá responded as if he had actually rehearsed his answer. "I mean, they had to balance out our strength levels with you being the weakest and all, and I hear Headquarters is even doing that 'politically correct' crap now to balance out the gender demographics. Girl or not, if you're going to drag us down, then you shouldn't even be on the squad Clara."

"What was tha-!"

"Um, Yes, excuse me, redundant question aside, we actually have business to do," interrupted Zoréno.

Truthfully, Zoréno was no ordinary hollow. He was an esteemed adjuchas-class menos grande after all. Yet he was amused by the smugness of the little rookie hollows they managed to dig up from somewhere in El Centro and send to him for his request. Killing them off for all their unnecessary banter would mean he'd have to actually go through the trouble of getting some more sent over and then having to explain things to...that annoying person in charge of there. Holding down his shudders he continued.

"Now, like I was saying before you three came down here from the trees-even though I specifically told you to stay there and 'hold that thought'," he said turning back to his prone gillian workers.

"Since you fools are so engrossed by these humans, I have a job for all five of you that actually involves them."

This was Zoréno breaking out one of those things that are technically 'rewards' yet ironically function as punishments.

"I want every drop of this filthy dirt removed off my loading platform. Make sure not a spec of it even diffuses into the sand, but don't you dare stop there. Oh no, you're picking up this earth _with _the humans still on it and you better make sure it stays intact while it's in your hands. I also don't want the humans shifting even a centimeter. I want absolutely NO dirt falling between your fingers and if it does, you will pick it up. You will take it all and report to 'Segunda Cárcel'. For you misfits especially, that's the second gaol in the top right corner. Can't miss it. You leave on my command. Any questions?" he asked his Gillian.

However, the cheeky hollow raised his hand to the obviously rhetorical end statement.

"Yes?" replied Zoréno as warmly as possible. If this conversation was actually having the nerve to happen right now, then he was going to let it entertain him a little.

"I thought _our_ orders where take the huma-," he began before being interrupted.

"Excuse me?"

"Yes Zoréno-sam-?"

"When did I ever give _you_ any orders or are you making assumptions based off of what those clowns at El Centro told you and secondly are you questioning what I've clearly told my workers here?"

"N-no sir."

Finally, he was breaking the smugness that had been on this hollow's mask. This group of hollows were so rookie he could practically see the rosy blush on their masks. Pure naivety could only be but so cute after all. Especially when it resulted in unprofessionalism. If these hollows had been one of his they would've been in his digestive tract by now, but yet Zoréno was one who liked to entertain himself. Mostly at the expense of others whether they knew it or not. The circumstances naturally varied.

"Ok then, so if you had allowed me to continue before, I would have gotten to your squad's task," he continued in the way an adult would talk to a child. It was his turn to be pompous.

"Your special task lies in the relocation of former Squad #336,"

"Former squad?" Apparently Tolsá still hadn't received the very recent memo Zoréno had sent out about staying quiet during his long rants/explanations.

"Yes, _former _squad," affirmed the adjuchas with stress on the middle word while eyeing Aloban and his partners with content.

"The only place these failures belong now is **'La Basurinera'**."

Aloban's eyes budged out of the eye-sockets of his colorful shattered mask at this. His unconscious, possibly deceased teammates showed no subconscious reactions.

"You three are to remove them from the presence of the humans at once, and transport them there immediately. Their dirty blood is tainting the little sample we actually have here," he said eyeing Orihime's close proximity to Fátima.

"I don't want anything moved out of place. This is what we call 'evidence'. As much as I'd like to tinker around with them, we'll leave that to Headquarters," he sighed eyeing the slowly fading light of the flashing distorted Shun Shun Rikka hairpins with intrigue. "That's their headache. Our job is simply to get them ready for transport and send all the preliminary data we have," he said turning back to the Gillian troop.

"Segunda Cárcel is the earliest gaol sending out a mass shipment; in even a couple hours at the earliest actually, and I want these two in that shipment. That's why you're going there. I thought I should at least explain that much even though it was unnecessary for me to do so," he continued nonchalantly as the novice hollows with their various appendages, easily removed all the various parts of 'Los Tranquilizantes'.

Clara split her two arms up into multiple tentacles for example and picked up multiple limbs including Dámian's arm. Through some other ability from one of the other hollows, the massive pools of blood were also seeped up and contained. It was as if the three bodies were never lying there in the first place. The "rookie" hollows had seemingly perfect customized abilities for this specific job.

"If La Basurinera is somehow able to get more information out of that refuse group, then I want a transcript ASAP. They are the ones who confronted the humans themselves, so they would have all the details. We need to add as much preliminary information to our data as possible before shipment. Make sure you also report to the Basurinera staff to inform their higher-ups in El Centro to either replace or adjust the squad numbers accordingly regarding the new vacancy. Between you and me, both are pretty slack so you actually have to tell both of them how to do their job these days. Most likely they'll just go with protocol and leave the opening vacant anyways," finished Zoréno, allowing the three hollows to take in all the details while balancing their 'cargo'.

"Yes Zoréno-sama, always glad to be of service," said Tolsá, some smugness returning in his voice, yet still giving authority. Maybe the 'smugness' Zoréno sensed was just his normal voice after all?

"A pleasure," responded Zoréno, turning his back to the hollow trio as they disappeared in a burst of sound.

_"Hmm. At least the brats learned some protocol. Always happy to install conformity,"_ thought Zoréno sarcastically before looking up.

"Hmm? What are you eyesores still doing here?"

"You told us to leave on your command...sir," responded Dámian. His body was still in shock from his arm being ripped out of its socket, but he and all the other mindless and sentient Gillian including Calibol had managed to stand back up following the previous reiatsu onslaught.

"Oh yes that's right. Look at me, just lost in my thoughts...Oh, and you all are aware of the fact that when you return, you start something new I just came up with. It's this little thing called a thousand-hour shift, and all your 'loyal' workers aren't going to suffer with you."

It's not that the sentient group of gillian had no reaction to the statement, it's just that they were petrified of reacting out of place. The 'visitors' were gone and they knew Zoréno was most likely back to his old personality. The one where there was a small percentage that he could possibly partake in the ripping off of random limbs from gillian. Basically they weren't taking the chance. The actually innocent Calibol wasn't in particular.

Meanwhile, Zoréno was in full justification mode as he 'read' the gillian their 'charges' with arms crossed and eyes closed.

"It's only fit. How dare you nearly put the entire 'División de Envío'* (spanish for: 'Dispatch Division'**) on the brink! ? Deserting in the middle of monitoring ongoing missions? ! Despicable! Luckily we had enough on hand so that people could cover for you, but when you get back you're covering for them tenfold! As for you Dámian, your arm that those three took will be waiting patiently for you in La Basurinera only _**after **_you return and finish your new shift! All of you are hereby stripped of subordinate privileges! Disperse your gillian and you're dismissed!"

At this, all the mindless gillian that had flanked the sentient gillian to the area meandered into the surrounding forest. This adjuchas...He was an enigma. At times his actions could be interpreted as cruel, and at other times, almost...amiable. He had offered the gillian his arm back, despite the stipulation attached, but _still _the precedent was there. Either way, his true intentions were hard to probe. Immediately, all five sentient gillian including Dámian and Calibol picked up the negación'd earth and synchronically disappeared in a burst of sound, leaving Zoréno to himself so he could once again get lost in his thoughts.

"_Our maiden 'harvesting' mission ends up like this! ? It's like the planets are aligning into place or something! I mean, I never even fathomed I would ever encounter spiritually aware humans, let alone __**us **__capturing__ them. 'Humans that can sense or see spirits'. It's a literal living oxymoron! I've only read of them in old manuscripts! And these two apparently can both sense, AND see! Even possessing some sort of tangible spiritual powers that can defeat professionally trained hollows? ! I could feel their power. Such perfect specimens, my mouth nearly watered at the scent of their souls! No Zoréno, it's not that though! That's not what matters! It's that this 'catch' __**along with the other previous two**__ this one week alone are going to put us over the top. And if we're on top, then that just means the path to evolution is that much faster opened to me, no to all of us! I must contact and gather the others..." _thought the goldenrod-hued adjuchas as he disappeared in an intense buzz of sonído.

* * *

><p><span>Flash-Point<span>

**Later that morning  
><strong>**2:01 A.M.-4:26:58 AM**

The world was hazy as it sluggishly came into focus. It was grayscale, monochromatic and frigid and the only thing that existed there that was a lone castle on a hill. Inside the castle was a beautiful princess with long flowing chestnut-brown hair with a vague orange tint. Her hair was one of the only things with color. The castle was guarded by the most elite guards, and the princess was assured that she must stay inside for her own safety, and that as there was nothing else existing in the world, she inherently had no reason to leave. Time after time again monsters of every shape and size would try to crawl up from the formless aether-abyss to reach the apex of the hill where the castle rested. Each time, they would fail, but not without taking out one or more of the guards in the process. Eventually only three were left. A large mesomorphic tanned man with brown curly hair. A raven haired main with spectacles. And a man with long striking orange-hair, and amber-eyes. Each of these attributes shone with color in the otherwise bleak world. They were the most valiant of them all. It was on that day, that a monster actually from a previous occurrence appeared. It had green scaly skin, and blade's coming off its body in multiple spots. It also had a mask with scale markings on it.

The noble guards went up to oppose the giant monster as the princess could only watch from the window. A resounding battle commenced, sending shockwaves through the sky itself. As dusk approached, the warriors tired out and before the beast could finish them off, it's forearm blade met the clang of a metal triangular shield. The princess had left the castle to go out into the freezing air for the first time to defend her own guards. She was no trained warrior, but she drew her own spotless sword nonetheless and stained it with blood for the first time, fighting alongside her warriors in an adrenaline induced blur with all her might. She ignored all the abuse she received and together, they all managed to slay the beast in the end as it disappeared into particles.

The unbridled immensity of the fight had eradicated the stronghold castle as it crumbled into nothing, and fell to very abyss which it was built to fortify against.

"Princess, what do we do now? asked the injured warriors.

The women responded somberly, yet serenely. "The only thing we can do. I realize after all this time, I could have made a difference, but now the castle that once protected me in vain has fallen. The way I see it, we either willingly jump in headfirst before the hill we stand on crumbles like the castle did, or stubbornly stay up here and fall against our will when it finally does."

And so, they plunged headfirst together as one into the infinite space to take on the realm of offending beasts. The lower they fell, the colder and colder it got. She didn't know how long they were falling, but the hazy world became hazier, bleaker, darker and more numbing until she wasn't even consciously aware of her surroundings or nakama anymore. Time was either distorted or didn't exist in the first place. Too cold. She hated the cold. Make it go away! Somehow she had to make it go away, go away, go away! The distortion of time made things vague and ambiguous. Then something happened. It started getting gradually warmer, and at once her vision was golden. A strange stark contrast to the bleak world of her dreams as her new golden vision slowly got wider...H-her dreams...! !

Abruptly, Orihime's eyes now slammed completely open in realization and she sat up in a somehow dry sweat, taking in the presence of her surroundings filtered by the same golden light of Sōten Kisshun.

**4:27 A.M.**  
>She had no idea where she was or what had happened. Still in a sleep-like daze, she called out her kotodama to enhance the shield's strength to finish healing her and take away the extremely disorienting numbing effect that seemed to be leftover from her dream.<p>

"Inoue."

The pure shock that voice brought actually committed genocide to all the sleep marks under her eyes and woke her up completely. It took whatever willpower she could muster in her state to stop from screaming.

"S-Sado-kun!"

"Shhh, not so loud Inoue." He was speaking but she couldn't' really zero in on his voice.

"Sado-kun where ar-"

"Behind you," he answered bluntly, and putting a hand on her shoulder at that.

It was like Chad was trying to scare her soul out of her body.

The boy had woken up a little while earlier to a similar vague numbing sensation. Their surroundings were blackened and dark so he had no depth perception as to how large an area they were even in.

Eventually he'd been able to make out the then mere glimmer of light coming from what he realized were Orihime's misshaped hairpins and all the memories came back to him from previously that morning. Instantly he remembered the condition he'd seen Orihime in before he'd fallen unconscious and became filled with anxiety. Subsequently, he rationalized that the blinking lights from the girl's Rikka meant she must still be alive. Plus there was no soul separated from her body as far as he could tell in the pitch dark. It was at that moment in mid-thought where the bright flash of light happened and the golden shield took up formation over the girl, illuminating their surroundings for the first time.

Still haunted by the prior images in his head of the girl, Chad mentally sighed at finally seeing her face. She was fast asleep with her eyes closed and an expression that could only be described as dauntless. It was also sort of juvenile or ingénue for lack of better terms; a stark contrast to her pained face and blank eyes from earlier that morning. There was even drool coming off the left side of her mouth with a light audible snore as she laid on her back.

_"Typical Inoue,"_ thought Chad, as he noticed color fading back into her skin making him wonder why she had been so pale beforehand.

It was then that she'd woken up.

"It's true that I didn't know where _you _were at when I was asking my question, but I actually wanted to know where _**we **_are." Orihime had finally spoken up after forcing her heart-rate to return to that of a normal human's.

They both looked around at their monochromatic surrounding reminding Orihime way too much of her dream. From the dim lighting it seemed they were in a giant windowless jail cell. The bizzare thing was, that it seemed they were lying on the **exact same ground **they had passed out on back in the town south of Karakura.

At this, they tried making sense of the grand scheme, leaving specific details for later. Mainly talking about how they could have ended up there. They'd defeated the group of hollows, by figuring out their weaknesses; their pride. Fátima and Ferenan had shown their prideful possessiveness when Orihime and Chad attacked Aloban initially. Seemingly blocking the attack as if they were noble living shields but in truth, they simply didn't want Aloban to have a 'claim' on any possible interference in 'their' fights. However, Orihime saw further than that mid-fight. All three hollows seemed to have complimentary abilities, as if they were a perfectly balanced battle team in that respect.

And while Aloban easily seemed the strongest of the three spiritual pressure-wise, Orihime could tell both Fátima and Ferenan had regenerative abilities due to her fighting the former and sensing the latter's reiatsu during his own fight, leading the girl to conclude from her 'balanced team' thought that the lead obsidian hollow probably lacked such ability. Maybe there _was_noble intent in Fátima and Ferenan's shielding actions somewhere below that twisted pride.

Whatever the case, both humans attacking the Aloban at the battle's climax lead to similar reactions from the other two hollows, which in turn brought about the fulfillment of their plan and led to all three hollow's simultaneous defeat. But that was simply the trifle of the details.

Chad relayed to Orihime what had happened after she passed out about the sky-piercing rectangular beam of light. A beam of light which Orihime after some thought, put things together and compared Chad's description to the same light they had seen ascend the traitorous shinigami captains into the sky like tractor beams during their adventure in the Soul Society.

At that, realization came flooding into Chad's head; the lethargic and numbing sensations both respectively evaporating at that point.

"That's right! What did the shinigami call it again back then? 'Negación'?" whispered Chad before another detail bludgeoned him in the back of the head.  
><em><br>_"But Inoue there's more. Before I went unconscious I saw a bunch of giant white hands reaching out of the hole in the sky we were being pulled into. Now that I can actually think about it clearly, they're the same hands we saw from back then in Soul Society when they tore the hole in the sky then too. If that's the case then we've been taken by...," he trailed off remembering the generic masks of those monsters back on Sōkyoku Hill after they had pulled themselves through the dimensional rift with their alabaster hands.

"Menos Grande." concluded Orihime as she stood up, still inside her healing shield. She took notice that she was actually still wearing her drawstring bag. She almost forgot that she'd put it back on during her fight with Fátima.

"It's not just back in Soul Society either. Don't you remember one of them attacked Karakura back in July?" she finished, crossing her arms over her chest and holding her sides.

How could either of them forget? That was during the time Urahara had "willfully" opened the doors of the world of shinigami and hollows to her and Chad, telling them it was their choice to 'go through the doors or not'. Remembering that specific latter point made her confused about Urahara's recent actions regarding her even more.

After both defeating hollows back then with their newfound powers and passing out from reiatsu exhaust, both humans found themselves waking up in a unfamiliar place-vastly similar to their current predicament. Urahara revealed they were in his shop and explained to them everything that had been going on, and at hearing their disbelief, told them to see for themselves and led them out of his shop.

They quickly found themselves a couple stories up in a warehouse/parking garage looking place that the enigmatic shop keeper had promised would function as a "safe observational area". They were still quite wary of the man, randomly waking up in his shop and him spouting all this nonsense about the afterlife. Yet both humans couldn't deny the paranormal activity that had been taking place up to then and that they'd just fought the very monsters he called 'hollows' themselves. It was simply a surreal day for them to say the least; as if everything they knew was being completely overhauled and redefined. Imagine how you would've felt. The random pluses they saw on the way to the "lookout" and Urahara's subsequent konso'ing of them as an example didn't do much to ease their anxiety.

Once there, they saw it all; the towering form of the Menos Grande, Ichigo's and Uryū's teamwork in battling it and finally the carrot-top's grave attack on it forcing it to retreat. It was all the way back then that Chad had answered a question of Orihime's in a way quite typical of himself.

* * *

><p>(flashback)<p>

**July 18th  
>4:02 P.M. At the designated observational point, two humans gaze out the window, deciding their fate.<strong>

"Look Sado-kun," said the girl holding on to the window sill's side in a unique stoic awe, referring to the monstrosity no more than twenty blocks from their location.

"Does this mean we have to make our choice here about the path we have to take?" she further inquired.

A long pause and no answer from the boy as the hair covering his eyes made his expression unreadable. The girl clenched her eyes in deep thought, bringing up certain unmistakable memories that were **supposed **to have been long since erased from her mind. But they all but further re-confirmed everything the knowledgeable shopkeeper Urahara had told them that day.

Slowly she opened her eyes again without turning towards the boy.

"Sado-kun," she spoke softly, getting his attention.

"What are we supposed to do?"

He looked over at her lithe frame with a solemn expression that turned into a contemplating one and put a hand on her shoulder, causing her to look up at him with curious brown eyes.

He paused for a while as if he had come to a decision, watching until Ichigo had somehow pulled out a hail-mary attack on the Menos that had attacked him with a beam of energy.

Then wordlessly he grabbed her arm, leading her to follow behind him before he let go of it and ambled towards the exit; an ajar open door.

He took one look at her which she reciprocated and then together they walked through it, making Urahara's previous symbolism literal.

Symbolically walking through that open door, they went down to meet up with the shopkeeper himself who had _conveniently_ left the scene by the time they arrived. Jinta and Ururu were busy doing clean-up duty and finishing off stray hollows.

Meanwhile, Tessai was busy fixing the giant crack in the sky from the kūmon created by the menos which had fled while the two were on their way to the scene. Once they finally did get there, Tessai got around to explaining Uryū's use of the Quincy hollow bait, how the larger monster had eaten most of the hollows, what happened to Ichigo and Uryū when the monster had used an attack called a 'cero'. How Ichigo actually managed deflect it, forcing the hollow to retreat back into the dimensional folds.

Somewhere in there, he also explained the general concept of the creature known as 'Menos Grande'. You know, the textbook definition that people give out because the unabridged definition is too abstract to explain to someone just getting introduced to the concept of hollows? 'Menos: A gigantic hollow born from hundreds of hollows that pile and mix together.' Yeah, that definition.

* * *

><p>Back to present.<p>

**September 10th  
>4:30 A.M.<strong>

"So we've been negación'ed by Menos Grande huh? Just like the shinigami captains were...but what does that mean?" spoke Chad, talking to himself more than Orihime.

Said girl did what she thought any normal, rational human being would do in her situation. As in calling out their magical hairpins that somehow change from being made of atoms to being made of spiritrons(reishi) in a big flash of light of course.

Ayame and Shun'ō were already out for Sōten Kisshun, so the shield was simply dispelled, while the rest of the Rikka appeared latterly.

"Hey do you guys know what's going on?" asked Orihime bluntly.

"Tch, why would you think we know something like that?" swiftly responded Tsubaki in a tone that caught Orihime off guard. He somehow had his bandana back on after losing it in the fight with Fátima. The rest of the Rikka looked aloof and indifferent in the darkness with Sōten Kisshun's light gone. Instead of their eternally vibrant personalities, they looked...apathetic?

_"__Huh? What's wrong with them?" _thought Orihime with concern. Normally there would be no cause for concern right after calling them out. It's not like they were supposed to have happy smiles glued on their faces upon activation or anything. She was just picking up strange vibes from them, even in that darkness.

Dwelling on what Tsubaki said, it was true that she seemed to remember Shun'ō explaining to her a lot recently that he and the rest of the Rikka don't have the apparent omniscient abilities of a zanpakuō. Aside from their standard kotodoama, they were learning new things about themselves and their full potential every day, no different than Orihime herself was. Why would they magically know what Orihime didn't?

"I just ah...I thought you might have some insight...a second opinion type of thing, that's all..." she said trailing off, looking down. The Rikka all bored holes into her with their eyes as if in synchronized contemplation. Then Shun'ō sighed before speaking.

"Ayame and I were activated unconsciously by you just now. We don't know what happened after we all returned to hairpin form after you passed out. Normally, we'd be able to stay active, but you over-exerted your soul. We all kind of blacked out, and I'm guessing it had the effect similar to what Tessai-san told us happened to Ichigo's zanpakutō after he attacked the Menos. As in we probably lost consistency in our hairpin forms for a while. Somehow we were restored, but uh...like Tsubaki already said, we have no clue how."

He said the last part of the sentence as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

Chad observed the scene with intrigue. He thought that he must have missed something, but there seemed to be some kind of conflict. He'd seen the girl converse with her Rikka multiple times before, but he never really got to see very specific conversation between them often. Did she always bring out her Rikka to talk with them? What type of conversations did they have if she did? She mentioned something like that back when she was sitting on the bridge yesterday night before their spar. Either way it seems that despite whatever was going on with them that they, including Orihime had all grown closer. He thought that you have to at least be close to exchange such meaningful glances like the girl and her Rikka just did.

_"Well, in that case," _he thought.

"Um..you're actually right Shun'ō," he began directly addressing the lead Rikka for the first time(when he and Ayame had come to heal his arm a couple days ago, he never really had the chance to call him by name).

"I remember seeing you guys twisted all out of shape after Inoue passed out, but that's the thing. After Ichigo did that attack, he still stayed awake afterwards, but Inoue went unconscious. It may not seem like that big a deal, but just now, she actually 'woke up'. As in waking up from a sleep, _not_ from unconsciousness. Maybe her sleeping allowed her to recover naturally, and once she did, she was able to call you and Ayame out to heal her more. It's actually kind of like how you healed her after I knocked her near-unconscious during our fight."

"Either way," he said subtly raising his reiatsu.

It's not my business to ask what issues you guys are having," he continued causing some of the Rikka to raise eyebrows.

"But if none of you have or want to think of any ideas to where we are, then I can bring back a tried and true one to find out for us," thought Chad materializing his arm.

Orihime's eyes widened at this and did a knowing smile. It was nice to see Chad was back to normal with his jumping right into things without any intel. Just like his plan on her birthday to go confront Shinji. They ended up catching both the tie-wearing Visored and Hiyori. Then right after that, his running straight to Yumisawa Children's Park to confront the arrancars. They ended up acting as first responders, saving Tatsuki's life and holding off the arrancar from killing anybody else. But that was Chad's mentality. If you have questions, simply run straight to the source and confront them. It's an A to B solution so don't go through some other multi-lettered path. Orihime liked his pure directness. It played out into other facets of his personality as well. He may not have much to say, but whatever he did say, you know you can trust it. There was no layering or sugar-coating.

Chad powered up an energy blast up to his wrist.

"Hold up Sado-kun!" shouted Orihime holding out her hand. A golden sphere of energy* formed in her hand and lit up the room completely.

"D-Don't you need to see the direction you fire?" she asked looking at her companion expectantly.

Chad grunted in response as if shrugging his shoulders. "Doesn't really matter either way."

In case you don't speak it, that was Chad-language for, "Direction'? Pft. Look Inoue, this entire room only has about two and a half seconds left of well...basically existence. With that in mind, get out the way while I make some omnidirectional explosions."

With the newly brightened room, they saw how confined their space truly was. It was like an empty, drab, makeshift cell. Three walls, a very curious ceiling that rectangularly protruded in the middle, a floor, and where there would be a fourth wall seemed to be a wide outline of an entrance, but no kind of handle. It was transparent, sort of like a window pane, yet there was still the same darkness on the outside. The entire texture of the corners of floor surrounding the mound of dirt they stood on was extremely rough and jagged, and the walls of similar looking texture seemed disproportionately built.

Orihime had jumped off the mound of dirt and felt the glass-like wall's composition similar to how she could feel a barrier's reiatsu density.

"_It feels so compact and dense in a strange way...a normal energy attack won't burst through it...it needs something more precise..." _thought Orihime.

"Wait, we don't know where we are! Let me shoot Tsubaki first, and then you can punch it with a weaker attack. It'll be quieter!"

"Alright! Let's go!" shouted Chad at the last minute as he ran behind Orihime towards the transparent entrance, jumping off the edge of the mound and...

The area was dark with no discernible figures. Multiple pairs of golden objects flashed in the darkness. However, they noticed since a couple of minutes ago that a vague yellowish light was coming from somewhere. It could be coming from anywhere for all they knew. Their surroundings were so dark that any amount of light would shine through. Suddenly a burst of bright yellow light from the same general direction followed by a bluish-white explosion illuminated the entire visible stretch of space.

The indescribable sound of a burst of power slammed through the unknown expanse, bringing complimentary light with it. Abruptly, all returned to quiet once more. But slowly and surely, a dim light re-materialized, though not as bright as before. Hesitantly, it got brighter and brighter before the multitudes of golden eyes finally discerned what only they could only describe as an ascending small golden triangle infused with white light.

"Sado-kun, is this high enough?"

"A little higher...there..that's it, that's enough."

The duo had easily broken out of their strange confines and now once again had to make out their surroundings.

They stood in a broad twisting and winding passageway, almost arena-sized in width alone. After looking back at where they had escaped from and then all around, they saw it. The endless rows of what looked like window panes on both sides of the passageway where they stood. Some panes were big, some were small. They weren't really dimensioned very well, but in the end, this was turning out to eerily resemble the interior of a massive prison hall.

Rows upon rows of the very same cells Orihime and Chad had been trapped inside. They rose up on both sides towards as far as the eye can see, and then stretched down the path extremely far, meeting up with a perpendicular intersecting row, promising yet more of the same around each of the corners. Like the 'panes', there was no geomoetric structure to the rows either. The 'floor' of the passageway itself has lots of dips and points where it was elevated as well. Completely bizarre and eccentric architecture, yet it was such a vast and grand spectacle. Chad thought it was like something out of a child's imagination, and the thought would return to him later.

"Wha-what is thi-this place is huge!" inquired the starry-eyed Orihime in wonder. They had come of the left side of the passageway, and Orihime had infused the energy she already was channeling in her hand into Santen Kesshun to create a more stable source of light than just the previous orb of light.

The illuminated Santen Kesshun floated high in the air, managing to brighten the vast expanse for quite a ways, yet still eventually giving way to darkness. It was a similar phenomenon to a _small bright_ object in a _large dark _room.

Chad and Orihime made to take their first steps along the path before it hit them like a burst of concentrated gravity. Dark spiritual pressure that is.

Everything came together sequentially in a mere subsecond. Each tidbit of information compounding on the last until almost immediately after the initial sensing of pressure did the two humans realize, it wasn't just one pressure, but the combination of possibly thousands of individual ones.

The two gawked with their eyes at their infinite surroundings in a new light before _it _began.

At once, the literally soul filled droning mourns, moans, shrieks, and cries of hundreds of hollows came out all together, overlapping each other. All in uproar over certain recent and particularly decibel-filled explosions, along with the new semi-blinding light added into their surroundings.

Some particular voices were barely made out among the mass hysteria.

"WHAT THE? ! IT-IT'S HUMANS? !"

"THEY BUSTED OUT OF THE CELL! WHAT WAS THAT ENERGY?"

"HOW DID THEY DESTROY THE GLASS? !"

"HA! LOOKS LIKE IT'S NOT INDESTRUCTABLE AFTER ALL!" said another voice followed by a loud impact and another cry of frustration.

"MORON, IF YOU COULDN'T BREAK IT BEFORE, THEN WHY NOW! ?"

"WHY ARE YOU IMBECILES SCREAMING? ! HUMANS CAN'T HEAR OR SEE US!"

"YOU'RE SCREAMING YOURSELF AND THOSE HUMANS HAVE SPIRITUAL PRESSURE!"

"OH MY GOD, THEY DO!"

"ABSURD!"

"SMELL THEM FOR YOURESELVES! THEY'RE SCENT IS SO STRONG, IT'S SPREADING EVERYWHERE!"

"WAIT A SECOND..NO WAY! DON'T TELL ME THAT'S WHAT THOSE GILLIAN BROUGHT EARLIER! IT WAS TOO DARK TO EVEN SEE BUT-!"

After the collective initial seconds of shock and various commentary from the hundreds of first responders, assorted voices then began actively courting the rogue inmates that were beyond their cells.

"HEY HUMANS! COME BREAK ME OUT OF HERE AND I PROMISE TO NOT EAT YOU AND TO TAKE YOU BACK TO THE LIVING WORLD!"

"REALLY? DON'T BELIEVE THAT DESPERATE TRIPE! I'LL GIVE YOU 2 SECONDS ON _MY _COUNT TO GET OVER HERE. ANY LATER AND I'LL EAT THE BOTH OF YOU! WELL NOW!? HURRY UP! CHOP-CHOP!"

Orihime and Chad were reeling from the literal surround-sound quality of the practically sonic-level bursts hammering their ear drums. There was so much overlapping yelling and impious screaming. They couldn't even tell where the voices were coming from, let alone who said what. At first it was just hundreds of hollows speaking and yelling at once. But once others heard the commotion they just added to the noise. If this kept up, the entire edifice or wherever they were would be in unrestrained bedlam.

The spiritual pressure bombarded them from all sides. Individually the pressures were nothing to even glance twice at. But combined, it was formidable...like an ant colony...though the individual pressures were also weakened as Orihime could tell. Yet the two humans automatically did what any soul naturally does as a defense mechanism in such a situation. Unconsciously raise their reiatsu.

Orihime held her hands to her ears to block out all the sounds and her reiatsu rose as a result as she clenched her eyes and strained to keep any more sound from getting inside. Chad did a complimentary action. When they realized they're reiatsus had been skyrocketing from adrenaline, they both uncovered they're ears to hear the stark silence.

_"Huh? It got all quiet...," _observed Orihime in her mind, treading the long ways towards the middle of the passageway with a rather frank expression. She took in the panes on both sides and sighed inwardly. She had come to a decision. If she was going to do this, she had to be decisive and not weak if they were to take her seriously.

Meanwhile over in Chad World© , the disheveled haired boy was a stray entity in his own mind.

_"This place...,"_ he thought. "_It really is some kind of gigantic prison! I can't even see the top of the rows and this path stretches way down there and then turns right and left. But there's a whole other wall of 'cells' down there at that point too. That means this huge area is basically only a hallway. Just what is this place...? "_

Suddenly he noticed Orihime's reiatsu rising again as the girl turned and gave him a serious look which he instantly understood.

She walked back past Chad over to the pane that was adjacent to the one they broke out of, and looked straight inside. She could barely make out anything due to the lighting conditions combined with the monotone opacity of the glass-like material. Abruptly, masks of hollows with their yellow eyes entered her field of vision and stared right at her. It was almost like seeing the glowing eyes of bats rapidly appear out of the darkness to your growing terror. Not to be caught off guard by the sudden action, she held a bold and stern expression which morphed into curious one as she unclenched her fists and cusped her hands over the glass at each side of her face, pressing her head against the glass to better see.

"Um...hello can you all hear me?" she asked uncertainly.

There was a brief silence before a snarky response, "TCH! Of course we can hear you! This barrier isn't exactly soundproo-"

"Ah! That's great! So would one of you mind telling us where we are, and what exactly's going on?" interrupted the girl delightedly.

They all collectively seemed caught off guard before a response rang out. "Heh! You ask us three questions and don't expect to get at least one in return? Tell us why we should even answer your question. What's in it for us! ?"

The interrogator was now being interrogated herself, causing her previously delighted expression to turn more serious as her reiatsu raised just a little bit. She quoted her previous thoughts in her head.

_"I must be decisive and strong if they are to take me seriously."_

"Nothing," she answered, with the words crawling out of her throat.

"Wha-"

"There's nothing in it for you. I'm the one out here, and you're the ones inside. Please answer or I'll just ask someone else."

After a shocked silence at this, chaos rebirthed anew like a pheonix from all cells on both sides of the passageway.

"WHAT WAS THAT GIRL? !"

"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? !"

"'WE'RE THE ONE'S INSIDE AND YOU'RE THE ONE OUTSIDE? ! _YOU'RE_ THE HUMAN AND _WE'RE _THE HOLLOWS! DON'T SPEAK AS IF YOU'RE ABOVE US!"

"WHAT'S THAT BOY DOING BEING SO QUIET? HEY, CONTROL THAT WOMAaa-," said the drowned out voice as a subtle commanding force silenced the hordes of thousands.

"Aaargh! Really now, a guy can't get some freakin' sleep around here? And when did those power tripping morons install a sun?"

At this voice, massive waves of pressure delicately enveloped the passageway like the waves of a tsunami, drowning out all the remaining whimpers.

Chad and Orihime broke sweat on pure reaction and went through mental hoops as a final tidbit arrived and compounded the information they had realized earlier in that aforementioned subsecond. They did twin whiplash inducing spins as they turned around to see the origin of the ominous voice.

_"Behind us this whole time was...!" _thought Orihime in alarm.

A dead end of the passageway was about fifty meters behind them down a semi-steep slope. About the length of an olympic swimming pool. Up to that point, there were no more cells lining the walls, but embedded in that dead end was a pane of the same glass material much larger than the rest. The entire path up to that point seems to have been newly constructed and the pane met geometric proportionality unlike the rest of the misshapen cells. A hollow possessing much power could be felt behind it. While the rest of the hollows were like a colony of of ants and only their pressure combined and positioned correctly felt formidable, the beast behind this window pane possessed the power of hundreds or perhaps thousands(?) of colonies by itself. Only because Orihime and Chad were surrounded on all sides where they even mildly discomforted by the combined reiatsu of the hollows earlier, but this sole hollow simply being in one spot was frankly giving off some very displeasurable vibes.

_"It's a dead end! With all the confusion I didn't even think to look behind me, but to have something like a dead end in this place. Does that mean we're in some kind of prison-labyrinth or-?" mentally _began Chad as he was cut off.

"Hey! Hey, you two," began the alto voice, further getting Orihime and Chad's attention. "Hurry up and get over here already. What're you doing standing like a bunch of blank-faced idiots. I mean, I'm over here trying to get some shut-eye when I hear a bunch of borderline banshee level shrieking. And after all that time I took to shut them up when I first got in this dump, and you two make them bust into hysterics. Looks like I had to remind them just who I am-Tch, Hurry up and get the hell over here!"

By this time, Orihime and Chad had finally regained some composure.

Chad finally spoke up. It always irked him when people had smug tones when they were in the position of weakness.

"Depends. Mind telling us where we are first? No need to go all the way down there to you, just to leave and come all the way back up when we get our answers."

"_This hollow...it doesn't seem as surprised as the others about us. Like it's more in control of its emotions...," _he thought.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard from the girl with the unnaturally high pitched voice just now that you want answers or something like that. Though, between the three of us, I have all the answers you need. But of course like you say, it _'depends', _...," he said mocking Chad with the latter word, "if you're going to break _me _out of course."

"Depends what you'll do after we break you out," added Orihime who either ignored or didn't notice the previous insult.

"Wow, like it really matters? What're you scared or something?" he asked as if amused. Then his voice took on an obviously overly-mocking tone.

"The big bad humans who can break out of their cells while no other hollows can are actually afraid of _little ol' me_,"

"Hey! Knock it off! You're stupid voice is making my ears bleed. Shut up!" shouted Tsubaki actually flying over and repeatedly kicking the glass-like barrier, throwing everybody off guard.

Shun'ō and Ayame instantly flew over and did quite similar kicks as Tsubaki did. Unfortunately for him, those kicks happened to target his face.

"Sorry, but I had to kick you for Lily's sake since she's occupied at the moment. What was that we said about 'impulse control'," began Shun'o.

"Tsubaki! Just wait till I down there!" shouted Lily in a corner of Santen Kesshun.

The offensive Rikka, whose head was still being sandwiched in between the Rikka captain's foot and the glass-like barrier responded in earnest.

"Tch! 'Wait till you get down there?' What are you, my mom? Nobody asked for your input four-eyes! Just stay up there and continue being part of the world's first triangular lightbulb!"

Knowing this was the makings of a shout-fest that would dwarf the chorus of screaming hollows earlier, Orihime was instantly down the steep slope, and Chad followed at her side.

The hollow within the cell seemed nonplussed at all of this. There were two humans with spiritual pressure in a place that certainly wasn't the living world, along with random bantering flying miniature creatures. All in a day's experience. He might as well go along with the flow. Things tended to answer themselves.

"Heh, You seem upset that the angry pixie came over to me, but in the end you both ended up coming over here anyway just like I wanted. But now I'm more confused than ever," he said from behind the opaque wall. His image was distorted because of the opacity, but both humans could tell he was rather large.

After the 'angry pixie' retort, Orihime had nostalgically grabbed Tsubaki out of the air to stop his inevitable rant. She noticed even Shun' ō seemed affronted from the hollow's "pixie" remark with his eyes squinting even more than usual as he took roost on Chad's shoulders.

"You said you're 'confused'? You have to _give_ answers to _get _any answers out of us. You're the one begging to break you out," said Chad laying down the serious ultimatum while Orihime ruined the mood as she desperately struggled with currently life-size pulsing vein that was Tsubaki.

_"Begging? Heh..keep thinking that," _thought the hollow cryptically while scoping out both human's spiritual pressure.

"Fine then whatever. I choose to go along with this just to see where it goes. It can't be that bad. Might even be fun. Not like I have anyone else to mess with, so listen up. The name's **Abdul ****Tarragó**," he drawled lazily.  
><strong><br>**Both humans began to mentally take notes, while Tsubaki was pulling at the edges of Orihime's lips trying to get out of her now familiar clutches.

Abdul sighed before continuing as if all he was about to say was quite a bother or an annoyance.

"Not sure how much you know being humans and all, so I'll just explain everything. Do you know what menos are?

"Yeah, we do, A extremely powerful hollow that is like the end result of a bunch of hollows eating each other. It's sort of at the end of the food chain," responded Chad.

_"Hmm? Just what have these two been involved in," _thought Abdul in leisurely surprise.

"Alright, so I'll skip all that crap and get to the point. There are actually three classes of 'menos'. The first is called 'Gillian'. They're the depressingly emo-dressed, Pinocchio-nosed, tall-for-no-reason freaks that brought you in here earlier. You actually roughly described only the idea of 'Menos' in general with your definition, but I think you were only picturing 'Gillian' in your head. There are two whole other classes far above Gillian."

The faces of Orihime, Chad and the three Rikka could only be described as priceless.

"HUH?, I can barely see your faces through this annoying wall, but they're worth straining my eyes to see! Did you really not think there was nothing further than Gillian? You never even got around to thinking about the possibilities? ! You truly are humans after all! Your definition was good for Menos class hollows in general, but it's bad that you used it unknowingly thinking specifically about Gillian. Don't get me wrong, Gillian are stupid and most are mindless anyway as a result of all the hollows it took to form that one being. At that point, the souls have blended together from all the eating and thus individuality is lost," continued Abdul.

_"Gillian? So far those must have been the only ones Inoue and I seen by his description. And there's two more above it? Personally, I just thought what I thought of as 'menos grande', just become stronger and stronger forever the more they ate. I never thought anything about 'classes'. Tessai never went this deep into detail when he explained everything back then. But then again, Inoue and I never asked him for all this info...because we didn't know there was more to ask I guess.."_

Abdul continued his explanation. "But rarely, one ego more powerful than the others within the Gillian achieves dominance and thus the Gillian becomes 'self-aware' with individuality. Tell me, just what did you think would happen if Gillian ate Gillian? ! That their noses would get even longer? ! HA! Amazing! Good guess, but not close enough. The newly self-aware Gillian continues eating other Gillian until eventually it reaches the next stage. **Adjuchas**!" shouted Abdul shouting emphasis on the last word.

"For your information, that's the current stage of yours-truly. I'm an Adjuchas Menos Grande! Gillian are like foot soldiers to us and we control them with spiritual pressure alone. Now you see why I so easily shut up the screaming idiots out there. I had everything nice and quiet until you two got brought here by the Gillian. Then they all started whispering like a bunch of gossipers, but I shut them up then too. Then you actually burst out of your cell and it turned out you were humans at that. It was so much for them to handle that they forgot who I even am-"

"Hey! Enough bragging about being able to step on ants. I've been waiting patiently this whole time without saying a word since everyone gets mad whenever I'm the voice of reason. I was actually giving you the benefit of the doubt, and all you do is give us info we could get by using some coupons at the local bookstore! Hurry up and tell us where the heck we are already!" exclaimed an escaped Tsubaki.

"Hmm. What I actually _would _tell you is to know your place. You're little fairy friends apparently know the deal. So I was going to say something just now but then I thought how funny it was to hear a mere fly commenting about ants. Go on please. I'm actually telling somebody _not _to shut up for once. Savor this moment, I beg you to," he said nearly chuckling.

Tsubaki'd had enough earlier, but this was too much. Expertly, Orihime wordlessly returned the Rikka to his hairpin form before he could even try to Koten Zanshun the life out of that glass pane.

"Ahem, now as I was saying," continued Abdul. Earlier he had been apathetic, but now he was clearly enjoying himself. He was loving the subtle psychological back and forth. While he was at the mercy of the human's decision to release him, they were at the mercy of his words and knowledge. So in a certain aspect, he was in control of the situation. And in the end as he'd already thought before, he wasn't even begging to get let out like Chad had accused him of. He was rather _telling_ them to do so. For both _them_ and _his_ own good. It's not like the humans were going to stay out there forever undetected...  
><strong><br>"**This is Hueco Mundo, which as the name says, is the world of hollows."

It was an unspoken realization from previously in their cell, but hearing the further re-confirmation for themselves put the humans on edge.

"I'm an adjuchas. I've been alone. Always have been as far as I can remember. I don't even remember being a Gillian. Maybe I was hit in the mask too many times or something stupid like that, but who cares really. **I'm all about the 'here and now'. Remember that,****" **he began, starting up a new point.

"So there I was on top of the desert of Hueco Mundo. A lame group of about ten Adjuchas thought they could challenge me. They were nothing. I don't even remember how they looked. I was stronger than all of them but they had to rely on each other like weaklings to even dent me. Slowly, but surely I took out all of them. It was pretty convenient that they actually came to me because I was starving, and you don't get a better meal than another of your own class of menos. In the end they had some crazy abilities, and I got banged up myself, but I made sure they never got a bite out of me. If a menos gets any part of them devoured, their evolution is halted forever and at worse they regress into mindless insanity. It's a menos's constant fear so to speak. Remember that it's not about who is the strongest. Just who's smart enough to not get any part of them devoured." He said the last couple sentences somberly, changing his tone for the third time that morning.

"I could even barely walk over to take my first bite, when I was hit in the mask with a blast called a 'cero'. I was careless, and luckily it didn't knock me out. They had purposely weakened it so I came to realize. 'They' were another team of adjuchas. This time six of them. I remember one of them that stood out most to me was the color gold with an arrow-head mask. Anyways, they were much different than the last group. Didn't want to eat me, but said stuff like they wanted me to 'join them'. That they were part of something greater, and that I had trespassed on their territory. That's when the waves of gillian hands pierced up through the sand and dragged down my kills down to the menos forest that I had just risked my life and sanity on. I tried fighting the adjuchas. Anger was all that coursed through my body, but I was overpowered. I was tired and they were fresh. Like most hollows, they had special abilities, and like the group I killed those powers were very unique. But not just that! They were extremely refined with what seemed like practiced techniques and skills. Even then, if I was fresh I could have probably taken out most, but not all of them out of sheer unknown factors. Who knows what else they had up their sleeve. I'm pretty modest a person if you haven't noticed," he continued with a grin in his voice at the latter sentence

"Do tell," responded an amused Shun'ō under his breath. He thought he was going to get to like this guy. That is, if Orihime's current thought process was going to end up where he thought it was. The girl's crazy ideas always humored him so.

"I was beaten and knocked near unconscious, but somewhere during that time those bastards did one last something that I'll never forgive them for. The cowards didn't even do it to me while I was conscious. They're mocking me!" fumed Abdul in emotional rage before he paused to calm back down.

"The last thing I remember before my unconsciousness was the sands dissolving under me and then me falling a long way. While it happened they said stuff about 'sending some squad out for "harvesting"', 'expanding the base', and 'shipping "this guy" back to headquarters' and stuff like that. I thought I was dreaming, but now I know that part really happened. After waking up in this cell to the racket that is this lunatic prison, I had _quite _a few interesting conversations with the rest of the 'inmates', asking them what was going on." He said the last line extremely sarcastically.

"I put it together, and what I got from them, and it all was that we've been captured by some kind of powerful group of hollows. At most, possibly some kind of army or empire by the way they said 'squad', 'base', 'headquarters', and 'something greater'. The other freaks in here say they've heard stuff about 'shipments' as well."

The more info Abdul laid out, the more the wheels turned in Chad's head. It's like he was close to a revelation, but couldn't get those final connecting details to form an epiphany.

"It's a stretch, but from what you've said, at least I can think, we've all been put in this prison place for some kind of 'shipment' to their 'headquarters'. And this might be a 'base' with 'squads'?" said Chad, trying to put together all the little puzzle pieces that Abdul laid out.

Orihime was right on his heels. She sported a concerned and inquisitive look.

"You said how they captured you, but now you've ended up here, and with all these other hollows here, they must've been captured too, but not by the same hollows that got you, but the 'squads' you talked about!" said Orihime putting things together as she went in a sort of ramble. She looked up at where she thought Abdul's head was and put her hand on her chest to show sincerity. "We were attacked by a group of hollows in the living world," she said gesturing to Chad as she said 'we'.

"They talked about how they wanted to 'capture and subdue us', so they must be one of the 'squads' as well. They were just normal hollows but you're an adjuchas who was captured by a group of adjuchas because whoever made the decision figured you were too strong for a normal hollows?" she continued as if questioning herself.

"But these people, they want to send us all to some 'headquarters'. But that doesn't explain why Sado-kun and I were captured. I don't sense any other humans here besides us,"

"You don't sense any humans? Besides you two freaks of nature, humans don't exactly have spiritual pressure to sense,"

"But that's not the point! These hollows said they were on a 'raid'. We weren't even their targets at first. They were surprised to see us and that we even had spiritual pressure! As far as I can tell, they just wanted to capture random human souls, and so we defeated them. But before we knew it, we were all beamed up in a negación. I don't remember that happening because I had passed out, but Sado-kun here remembers. He even saw the...," she paused as if trying to recall a name.

"...Gillian! He saw the gillian hands reaching out to grab us, but at that point we both had already passed out. Next thing we knew, we woke up in the cell and put together what we both knew and found out that's actually what happened. We had no clue what else was going on so we busted out and the rest is history...," she paused as a smirk crawled on her lips before she rubbed the back of her head in her old habit and laughed.

"Hehehe, I've always wanted to say that. 'The rest is history!' Pft! I sound like a old man," she said before imagining just how she would look as a old man...waving around a cane sort of like Yammamoto's made out of the highest quality keyaki wood like the cabinets in her kitch-

"Um Orihime...it's a bad time for that," said a sweatdropping Shun'ō referring to Orihime's knack for daydreaming.

The girl sported a sort of embarrassed face at this. By now, Chad was used to the girl's behavior and just smiled.  
><strong><br>**Abdul used this time to pause as if in deep contemplation.

"...! Actually, it makes sense when you two put it like that! I've thought as much, but hearing you two put it together so perfectly makes me feel better about my thoughts. Tch, if that's the case then it goes back to what I've wanted to say the whole time. This place is far underground the actual Menos Forest, and the only way out of here is going all the way back up to the desert, and for that you need to for like the **FIFTH **freakin' time, break me out of here!"

At this Orihime perked up, as if finally coming to a decision. The same one Shun'ō had predicted earlier.

"Ah good! Then that makes you our tour-guide if I break you out!" she said confidently with a determined smile.

Personally Abdul didn't like her tone. 'Tour-guide?' What the heck? These humans were getting too relaxed around him. No...no need to ruin things now. He was almost out after all. But at the same time, a little complacent 'conflicting argument' couldn't hurt now could it?

"You say that as if I'm supposed to help you guys escape as well. Heh. Just when the heck was that discussed? It's not possible for all of us to escape. Plus, you'll just slow me down."

"It was discussed about four seconds ago from Inoue. I know you were joking about it before, but you really do have memory problems after all? And your argument doesn't bring up good points for somebody that wants to get helped out by us. So are you up for it or not?" responded Chad bluntly.

If the hollow was going to be a smart-aleck, then why not return the favor. He didn't know what wacky scheme Orihime was up to, but might as well go along with it. He trusted her that much. Though, it's not that he couldn't think for himself. The whole plan of who should do what during the first fight against the arrancar was under his command after all. It's just that he'd come to realize after the most recent instances that she was the 'brilliant planner', while he was the 'ever-efficient executor' of said plans. It was a complimentary team dynamic, that couldn't succeed without the other person. He'd also learned from fighting Ferenan, countless delinquents, and the way he used to act when he was younger in Mexico, that the only way to fight Abdul's type of personality was to mirror it, yet still keep his own stoic essence into it, thus his apparent pompousness towards Abdul just now.

He stopped his thoughts to realize Abdul was...chuckling?

"Oh man, this is great. Those are some choice words to say to someone who's going to be out and possibly use you as roughage for his stomach. As long as you're in Hueco Mundo, _I'm _your only hope."

Strands of hair had covered the front of Orihime's face before she brushed them aside and crossed her arms as if finalizing her conclusion. Shun'ō's prediction had now come full circle.

"'Only hope' you say? Good, so then it's mutual," she said with pleased finality.

He responded with an airy variant of sarcasm, almost as if he was rolling his eyes. "You say 'mutual' as in you're _my_ only hope? Hah. Please enlighten me how _that's _true'?"

His only response was a sharp high pitched noise and an accompanying flash of golden light appearing for a brief second as it bisected the middle of the "window pane" that separated him from the outside world. The apparent slice caused stress fractures, and cracked the rest of the pane, as it disappeared into spirit particles. Light flooded into his cell and he saw the two humans clearly for the first time. A semi-petite girl, yet with long legs and a middle sized frame rather than a small one. She wore a stuffed large black drawstring bag and had on some kind of uniform with a yellow vest and a grey skirt. If there was to be a trademark feature decided upon, it would be her long flowing chestnut-brown hair. Three of the small creatures he was vaguely able to make out before floated around her head. It shocked Abdul that they truly were almost like miniature humans.

The accompanying boy was much larger in both frame and sheer size. The girl only came up to the bottom-middle of his chest. His skin was bronze-tan with dark curly brown hair. He wore a long fitted navy blue V-neck shirt with a raised collar and yellow floral design on the left shoulder. On his neck was a necklace of sorts. His white(ish)/khaki pants were the relaxed style and his light grey shoes were sort of pointed, and almost looked like dress shoes.

The girl gave him a once over with a decisive look and uncrossed her arms. The hollow was imposing and much larger than he seemed behind the glass pane. It seemed he had been crouched on his knees when speaking to them before and now he was standing up. His navy indigo body with silver stripes was humanoid with a supposed structure of two arms and legs, no tail. He had a large frame with an extremely distinct V-shape upper-body, with his shoulders looking like enlarged balls in sockets, widening the V-shape even more. His muscle definition was like he was carved out of marble, but his forearms seemed enlarged in proportion to the rest of his arms. Topping this off, he had little holes lining his fingers and each side of his arms, legs and torso, and a few on his large shoulders, as if it were a pattern of tattoos. And not that the two are related in any way at all, but his mask seemed like a mixture between tribal and demonic influences.

Chad only came up to the top of his hips, while the height difference between Orihime was of course much starker.

_"She made Tsubaki break the barrier without me this time, and this glass looked even thicker than ours. She must've adapted from the last one so she knows how much energy to use…Hm, 'You say 'mutual' as in you're _my_ only hope? Enlighten me how that's true' he asked. And Inoue's answer is..,"_ questioned Chad in silent observation.

_"So that's your answer huh? Breaking me out? I get i-" _began Abdul in his head before he was interrupted and corrected unknowingly by the speaker.

"_This _is how that's true," answered Orihime as two of the creatures came together and formed a golden luminescent elliptical shield over his body. A calming emotional effect washed over him as the immense lingering pain from his injuries glassed over, and the injuries slowly began to actually disappear? ! Gashes and bruises, sealed together and corrected. Piercings, impalements, and gorings, all filled in. Blood stains, sweat residue, and even vestigial tear marks, evaporated off his body and cracked mask respectively. Last, but not least was the empty hole where his exposed left arm socket was.

Continuing her healing, she also continued explaining. "You were saying you were this 'great Adjuchas menos' hollow, but it didn't add up since you felt even weaker than what I recognized as a Gillian. I realized earlier that all the hollows in this place were weakened. Your stories about yourself being injured and captured and my realizing the others were all captured as well just like Sado-kun and I helped answer those questions. But you also said those adjuchas did something unforgivable and there was much emotion when you said it. Not being able to see your face, I had to figure out everything from your voice alone. I knew I'd come to the right decision after hearing that voice. 'The people that already captured me and hurt me managed to do something even more unforgivable'," said Orihme doing her best 'Abdul' impersonation while ad-libbing his lines.

'What could it be? What could be separately unforgivable than already being captured and beaten?' I thought, before realizing how much sadder you sounded when talking about what happens when a Menos gets a part of it devoured.

Abdul's eyes widened at the tenderness of the girl's words, but they bulged at seeing, and more importantly, actually _feeling _the coalescing reiatsu where his limb once was. It was like a bizarre phantom limb sensation. In no order, the coalescing reitsu thickened into more bonds, forming reishi.

"Don't you see? Don't you understand now?" she said with a smile. "You said there were _three _classes of menos earlier...," she began, as the bonds began bonding together.

"Hmm...you've only told us two of them,..." she continued pouring energy into the shield with intense focus.

"But I can tell..." she went on, "I can tell you're like Sado-kun and I. You want to reach the top. You want to reach that third stage!" she finished as the bonding bonds solidified in a wave of energy going down from Abdul's arm socket to the last digits on his hands forming a fully fledged arm.

"You let her do an unknown technique before knowing it would heal you? I didn't take it you were such the trusting type," commented Chad.

"Shut up, I felt no killing intent," whispered a still awed Abdul without even looking away from his restored arm. He clasped it over and over again.

"New arm huh? I know the feeling," commented a knowing Chad, revealing his amusement this time.

"_Do_ you now?" inquired Abdul looking down at the boy.

Orihime once again had her arms crossed.

"I'll ask again. Don't you see? You understand how it's 'mutual' now? You want to reach the final stage right? Imagine you leave right now, and escape like you said, only to run into more enemies down the road and get part of yourself devoured again. Nothing to do, but live a hopeless life right?" asked Orihime as both the males looked at her with acute attention. Chad at this point finally realized what direction Orihime was going in.

"But with me, you have nothing to worry about. You're assured that third and final form no matter what," she said making a fist, augmented with a confident grin.

"_She explained how it's mutual, but now her answering the question just created a new one. 'Why?' Why practically 'offer her services' to this guy? I know this is another one of her plans..but what is the plan? ! I can never tell what's going on in her head anymore. It's like she's always one step ahead,"_ thought Chad.

Meanwhile Abdul was also finding this too good...no, too _strange_ to be true.

"All of that aside, at first we were just talking on why I should help you get up to the desert, but now you're talkin' like you want to travel to the ends of Hueco Mundo and back. What're you going on abou-"

"Exactly!" beamed Orihime.

"Wha-!" he began before being interrupted again.

The girl continued energetically explaining herself as if she was comically unveiling a grand scheme. "You weren't listening earlier were you? It may seem opposite of what you're normally supposed to do, but you actually have to take everything I say very literally. I said if I let you out, that you'd be our 'tour-guide' didn't I?"

_"Is this girl being serious?" _thought Abdul mentally deadpanning. Frankly he found it hard to take anything she was saying seriously in the past thirteen seconds.

"I-no, _WE_ plan on traveling with you! How about it Sado-kun?" she said looking up at Chad with a knowing look.

Truthfully Chad had been freaking out for a moment there. His mental lag with Orihime's mindset was leaving him clueless of all the things he would normally pick up on, but now his mental connection with the girl was re-established. Luckily Orihime hadn't noticed the internal struggle in the least as Chad replied in his typical low voice and a grunt.

"Hm. Don't see why not. We can get much better training here if that's all you were thinking right?"

"Exactly," repeated Orihime nodding her head.

Meanwhile Abdul was doing back flips through flaming hoops at trying to decipher what the heck had just happened.

_"T-T-training? ! Did I just hear tha-I just heard that didn't I? ! What do these two think this is? A class field trip? ! And what am I? The chaperon You've got to be kidding me? Oh wait, hold the phone! I AM kidding! I forgot I'm the damned 'tour guide' instead! The chaperon-tour guide from hell!"_

If any of Abdul's continuing thoughts were escaping onto his mask, the two humans didn't perceive it at all. They were too busy practically drawing up an idiotic training schedule! No really, the girl had actually pulled a marker out of who knows wher-oh wait her bag! She got it out the bag! She pulled it out and was writing on a sheet of paper! Was he really stuck with these two? What kind of hollow was he? Not even a hollow had **ever** helped him in anyway shape or form before and to be rescued by humans! Possibly psychotic ones at that! And the girl! He hated the girl for babying him like some lost child during the time she restored his arm! Fine then! If this is how things were going to go...Apathetic mode: activate!

"Tch, whatever, but what you're NOT going to do is hold me in this geometrically challenged, funhouse-mirror-reject prison like a pair of dungeon balls shackled to my feet. I refuse to exist in this dump any longer! So, if you can't keep up, you're left behind! It's that simple!" shouted Abdul with the super-power of apathy.

He trudged out the former dark confines of his cell for the first time, walking in between Orihime and Chad who made room for him. At this point, he didn't care who the heck the humans were or where they came from as he'd already had quite enough of them. He didn't care about what the heck girl's freakish powers were and why was there still high in the air what looked like a giant triangular sun(Santen Kesshun) blinding his eyes before they had even managed to adjust to any light. Nor did he even question if the boy even had any powers. It's like he said, if they didn't keep up, they were on their own.

"Sounds like a plan," responded Chad, turning to follow at the hollow's left.

"Yeah! It's not like we're weak. You're not the only one who made all the hollows stop yelling earlier you know," said Orihime referring to the time her and Chad covered their ears from the sonic onslaught and unconsciously raised their reiatsu as a result, thus ending the clamor of hollows. She waded in the adjuchas's wake before going off to his right side.

If his mask wasn't basically the equivalent of being hot glued to his face, Abdul would have done an exaggerated eyebrow raise right then and there.

"Pft. Shut up, you act like you _knew_ what you were doing. You didn't even make the connection of raising reiatsu and subduing hollows until I explained it to you back there. I hate when people use recently acquired knowledge like they knew it all the time when they actually just learned it. Plus you say you're 'strong' and not 'weak'? If I recall correctly you 'passed out' from fighting normal hollows. Weak." accused Abdul.

Tusbaki had enough of the hollow's put-downs's at that point. Not that he would admit he was mad that Abdul was insulting Orihime of course. It was that he had sole copyright and royalties of all insults directed toward the girl, or at least that's what he told himself at night.

"AND If _I _recall correctly, you couldn't even bust out of that brittle breakaway glass wall by yourself! For morons like you who don't understand, that's the type of glass that's made to purposely break. Weak!"

Abdul was indifferent to this quip. "Oh look, the angry pixie was finally allowed to speak again. Hey girl, you sure have got these little fairy-reject things in check and under your thumb. It's like they have their own minds, but they know the deal. They know who's in charge. I mean all this time, that pirate ripoff wannabe-looking one was afraid to talk or else he'd get turned back into a female hair accessory like before," said Abdul referencing the time Orihime had returned Tsubaki to his piece of hairpin.

_"A 'wannabe pirate ripoff'? ! That makes the old 'masked bandit' joke look like a compliment! This makes the score Abdul: 2, Tsubaki: 0! I wonder what Lily and Hinagiku think about this guy and wait...is he really __**asking**__ Tsubaki to talk? His eardrums must be suicidal! And now Tusbaki's probably gonna have hairpin insecurity issues," _thought Shun'ō, mentally sweatdropping oceans of sweat at that moment. However, the 'they know who's in charge' comment irked him to no end as well. There was after all, still the unresolved conflict Chad actually picked up on earlier that all the Rikka had to address later...

"Hm. I know I said 'sounds like a plan' earlier, but do you actually have a plan or are we just going to blast out of here? Because I can work with that," answered Chad lowering his reiatsu as he continued walking back up the steep slope.

Abdul seemed to be genuine with his answer. "Eh? Plan? If we stay here we'll get attention for sure. It's like you said, we either 'blast out' or it's-"

**"Light's out"** finished a pre-adolescent voice of a boy as a burgundy beam of light rocketed through the floating Santen Kesshun like a spear. There was an explosion of energy of the same color and then the pitch black returned as if a weak light bulb had just gone out. All was quiet. All was dark.

"Drat! It's _him_!" complained Abdul.

"Who! ?"

"Don't ask questions! Get on guard! This is his domain!"

Instantly, Orihime concentrated more energy at her hands as a source of light. She tried lowering the brightness level as it had the problem of her only seeing a few feet in front of her because of the pure contrast of darkness and light. There were lots of sounds. Something was making alot of buzzing noises..sort of like the rapid movement of a sonído! In mere seconds there were enough buzzing that it was indistinguishable from a busy beehive. A bunch of tiny red lights were forming all across the dark air. Quickly reforming Santen Kesshun, she infused energy into it for faint lighting, and put it behind her. What she saw shocked her.

A child-sized hollow even smaller than Orihime stood atop the steep slope they were ascending. His copper toned body was like that of a strange dysmophic bipedal termite with a mask that looked like an ant head, but with a bird of prey's beak instead of ant pincers That surreal bizarreness wasn't what put the girl into shock however, nor was it even close to enough. The first hollow she killed was a flying chandelier-jellyfish hybrid with heart-shaped eye holes, and it's ability was to shoot out what looked like 'mask acne' that exploded in phlegm-green splatters for crying out loud. That enough easily desensitized her to the meager grotesque and chimerical form of your average neighborhood hollow.

No, what shocked her was that the demure figure had his six insectoid arms crossed in front of an army of what seemed to be infinite Gillian as their forms merged into the darkness the further back they went. Oh, and they were Gillian who all just happened to be charging up a certain familiar blast of red energy simultaneously.

"Offensive Gillian Technique(OGT) #1: 'Lluvia Sangrienta', (Spanish for: 'Bloody Rain')" came the same young voice as before from the tiny hollow.

"DODGE OR DIE!" shouted Abdul as near pitch black was replaced by complete 'pitch red'.

Out of the incinerating saturation of red flew Orihime and Chad, both infused on a dimmer Santen Kesshun into darkness.

"Hold on Sado-kun," said Orihime as she vastly expanded the shield, and crouched to put her hand into it, and did her best incantation-less Shiro Ana. The light flashed into the shield, and instantly as it did, she recited her kotodama for Santen Kesshun to stabilize the fickle Hado spell. The spell was meant to simply be a burst of light, but reciting her kotodama complimented the energy and stabilized it.

With the new higher quality more trustworthy source of light, Orihime could see Chad had his arm materialized, but it was extremely too bright from her shield. She kicked it away back up into the air with an aerial flip, and landed back at the entrance to Abdul's former cell at the bottom of the slope. Or what used to be the entrance. The entire cell entrance and cell itself had been completely vaporized. If anything, the attack had simply expanded the entire steep slope another hundred and fifty meters down.

Looking up, both humans saw smoke still clearing from the massive attack. And noticed that Abdul hadn't budged an inch from his former spot.

"Canceling out my 'Lluvia Sangrienta' with your own blast, but still allowing my attack to go around past you to save energy from having to cancel it out completely? That's really skilled! And it was smart telling those humans to get out the way. Not even someone like you could have blocked perfectly for them with the time you had to do so,"

Abdul was currently somehow breaking the record for largest grin on a hollow mask. Ever.

"Well, well, well if it isn't the kid-adjuchas himself? I was beginning to think you wouldn't show."

"Who's this?" asked Chad for the second time that morning.  
>"Yeah, how do you know him Tarragó-kun?" echoed Orihime.<p>

_"'-kun'? What's with that? Nah, I'll ask later," _thought Abdul before turning his head and responding.

"This little brat is basically our jailor and-"

"Shut up! I'm not a brat! And first, let me introduce my own self! It's not 'brat' or 'kid'! It's Xodri Halconero! Warden of this gaol, 'Segunda Cárcel!'" he shouted from atop the steep slope in a youthful voice.

"Oh, and he prefers 'warden' over 'jailor' by the way," said Abdul with his head still turned towards Orihime and Chad, ignoring the adjuchas warden. "I'll have to keep a mental note of that, but it's gonna be pretty hard so please forgive me in advance," he teased.

"That speaks for itself about the size of your tiny brain. And it looks like you've managed to make some little friends there. I figured shipping you would be pointless if you were such the antisocial type based on how you interacted with the inmates, but now I can sleep at night without worrying about your social anxiety," he counter-teased.

Abdul grunted at that line, while Xodri sighed in annoyance in preparation for the next segment of his rant.

"It's funny how I leave to go to stupid Zoréno's stupid dumb waste-of-time summoning which lasted two whole hours, and come back to find somebody put some kinda new light system in my gaol! It was pretty dark in here, but that's my style. If you want some light, go to the other boring gaols! And out of all our three big catches this week, I'd expect that dumb shinigami to cause trouble, especially you Tarragó, but not the humans!"

_"Eh? shinigami?" _thought Orihime looking up at the Xodri, as she and Chad ran up the slope, flanking Abdul who was in the middle where they originally were before the the massive waves of ceros rained down on them. They both gaged Xodri's spiritual pressure as he stood at the top.

Finally, Abdul turned towards the adjuchas himself after they arrived. "Ha! Not expecting me to cause trouble? ! You're talking to the guy who was cooped up in a cell for a week with no food at all! The same guy who was already initially starving and then got his actual food stolen by you and your gang of nutcases in the first place! I suggest you leave unless you want to be the lucky hollow that breaks my fast. Even though I'm starving, I still hate having breakfast so early in the morning, but you might make me change my mind if you get me all worked up. It's too early for a kid to be up anyway so either disappear or I'll end this quickly by the time I get to the top of this hill," he continued. "It should take about ten seconds so try counting in your head...," said Abdul stalking up the slope to approach the child adjuchas.

"W-who do you think you are old man? ! Forget shipping! You're all dead! Y-You two humans are straight out of some fairy tale! You were basically never were supposed to even exist in the first place so you won't be missed! The shinigami is all we need!" shouted Xodri as his droves of gillian began charging all their ceros.

"Hey you two, don't wet your pants just yet and just follow my lead," spoke Abdul continuing his ascent.

"I take it he's one of the six adjuchas that attacked you?" questioned the armor-armed Chad, walking behind him and ignoring his taunt.

"Bingo, but he's the runt of the litter," responded Abdul in a low voice, before shouting out to his attacker..

"Hey kid! Make sure you actually fire in my general direction this time got it? Think of me as a living target! You can't miss it!

At hearing this Xodri puffed out his chest, leaned his head back, and began charging his own uniquely colored garnet cero in rage, complimenting the growing background of generic crimson red.

Orihime had stayed behind the two slowly ascending males, and gazed up airily at their apparent impending doom. But for some reason she wasn't frightened at all, even as all the Gillian prepared to fire. This time, even more of them, if that was possible, were participating in the makeshift shooting range with only three targets. She caught Abdul's sudden glance and nod back to her as he turned back around to face Xodri. As his spiritual pressure eerily rose, she had nothing short of a realization.

_"'Follow his lead'..I get it now!" _she thought as Santen Kesshun shattered in the air on her command in an explosion of light. Pitch darkness returned, only to as before, be replaced by concentrated red explosions. The only difference was the stifled shriek of a young boy that echoed out into the vicinity.

Relighting a reformed Santen Kesshun next to her with Shiro Ana in the same special method as before, Orihime took in what happened in that mid-second. The surreal scene was emphasized by the effect of the lighting. It was as if a flashlight was being pointed at it.

The apex of the slope Xodri had stood on before the sudden black-out now was caved in with massive billows of smoke coming off of it. Slowly the smoke cleared to reveal Abdul's large arm up to the wrist completely pierced through Xodri's small abdomen and out his lower back. Both hollows seemed burned from the cero's but Xodri took the epicenter of the attack, with part of his hide literally melting and dripping off of him. It was a point-blank attack from all the Gillian this time and against a completely unguarded opponent after all. At most, Abdul simply took the brutally harsh recoil of the attack, but somehow managed to tank it, aging his body once more with future scars.

"G~g-uhh~ACK!" shouted Xodri coughing up blood as his eyes became glassier.

"Come on now kid. Don't tell me some crap like I didn't warn you. I don't even want to see any waterworks since I have absolutely no sympathy for brats...Hmmm?" he said noticing the hollow's confounded expression.

"Ha! You look like you don't know what hit you! Are you that naive? ! Or did you just forget I, an adjuchas, can control Gillian as well?"

At this Xodri's eyes widened under the eyeholes of his mask.

"You were so caught up in getting them to aim at me correctly and depending on the light from the girl's technique which you normally don't even need, that when the light was destroyed you and your 'soldiers' were caught off guard for just a second and that's all I needed! Man, you really are naive for just now realizing that. Don't get me wrong though. I admit I used to act like a kid too. I even played with toy soldiers like you for a while," he said gesturing to the Gillian.

"But in the end, I realized they're just toy soldiers, not real ones like me. You know this yourself, and that's why you don't keep any self-aware gillian around. But from what I've seen while I was here, you treat your own gillian like freakin' pets or something rather than toys. Then I remembered that 'this is a kid after all'."

"SHUT UP STUPID!" yelled Xodri, as black-reddish blood spilled from his mouth with each enunciation. "You don't know anything abou-!" he went on and stopped mid-sentence. Abdul could tell it wasn't because of his coughing up of blood, but out of shock.

"W-wha!...," he whispered in a pitiable whimper, staring at the arm that pierced his being.

"Huh?" question Abdul in genuine confusion with a tinge of annoyance.

"WHAT THE? ! HOW? How did you get that arm back? ! Celvia and Zoréno bit it clean off! You were too beat up to even do any kind of regeneratio-wait what happened to all your injuries? !"

At this, Abdul's demeanor completely changed. He started talking in a polite tone?

"Huh? You're just noticing that? Maybe you should fix up the lighting in this place for real. Besides, the only thing I care about what you just _yelled_ in my _ear_, are these 'Celvia and Zoréno'. Did you just say those were the ones that bit off my arm? They're part of your group that captured me?"

"Y-yeah, they ripped it off you and split it between t-themselves-s! They ate the pieces in one bit-"

"Good. And one last thing," interrupted Abdul in the same tone, slightly retracting his hand out of Xodri's abdomen, causing the child to wince as blood to flooded out.

"You were trying to say something stupid earlier like 'Be quiet, because I didn't know anything about you'," he began. "So let me explain something real' quick. I don't need to know squat about 'you'. Because as of now, 'you' are part of 'me'," he finished as greyish-silver energy formed around his hand and rocketed through Xodri's body, flying all the way to the end of the passageway, taking out a multitude of bunched up Gillian along the way, and detonating in a brilliant sterling explosion.

Xodri's lifeless steaming corpse hung from Abdul's clutches. He used the now enlarged hole in the child's bottom-torso for grip as he turned and showed it to Orihime and Chad who were wide-eyed at how abruptly brutality had rushed onto the scene.

"You see this! ?" screamed Abdul. "This is the life of a hollow every day! This isn't the idiotic safari you two were going on about earlier! If you can't take carnage every moment of your existence, then don't bother taking another step out of this place behind me! Lock yourself back up in that cage and repair the glass you broke to get out, and none of this ever happened! It was _I_ that simply broke out and escaped on my own. But if you want to learn to do whatever it takes to **survive**, no matter what, then take those steps!

A short pause was held before it was ritualistically broken.

"'Do what it takes to survive no matter what'?...Let me put it this way...," began Chad making his was up past Abdul and his kill and took a couple more steps forward. One of his old habits flared up as he paused in the middle of talking. A long silence was held before he broke the habit and continued speaking with his back to the adjuchas. "I certainly don't plan on dying any time soon," he finished simply. His face was unseen as he stood facing the now leaderless and confused Gillian.

Now only Orihime remained on the incline of the slope that went down to Abdul's former cell. Her hair covered her eyes and her face was darkened. Suddenly, that darkness on her face was illuminated by a golden aura, revealing the most serious expression Chad had ever seen on the girl's face when he turned to look as her. As she enveloped herself in reiatsu, the two males were once again focused on her.

"I get it," she began in a low voice, walking up the slope, past Abdul and Chad. "I get that we're not in the living world anymore...so...," she said outstretching her hands towards the rows of cells as they glowed with energy.

"The rules of that world, don't apply here. I can't say hollows shouldn't kill one another, as if humans aren't the same way with each other, however sad that fact is. It's probably why some humans end up as hollows in the first place," she said remembering Fátima's choice words about humans right before they all got beamed up to Hueco Mundo.

"But what I'm not, and won't let this place turn me into is a 'carnage' loving monster," she said partially quoting Abul's 'carnage', while flowing into a barely ad-libbed version of her own quote and response to Fátima from just a couple hours earlier. "A monster is one who destroys innocent souls. Be it human, plus, or hollow," she continued. "But as long as _we _have to survive, I have no problem doing whatever it takes for all of us," she finished as Tsubaki flew into her palm in a burst of energy.

"Koten Zanshun-Shō! I reject!" she yelled as entire rows of cells all the way down to the end of the passageway were instantly chain-sliced open by Tsubaki. Then the Rikka arced back into the girl's hand as if returning for refueling. She provided him fuel by repeating the attack over and over and over, eventually doing so without incantation to speed up the process.

Within seconds the hollows started what can only be described as busting out the seams of the cells with their monstrous roars.

"Hmm? What's this about girl?" questioned Abdul rather leisurely after about a minute of the girl's actions. Once again he proved to be incredibly low-strung of a person in terms of reactions to things.

"You said earlier, it's only possible for one of us to escape. But with the warden out of the way and now this," she said gesturing towards Xodri's wayward Gillian hordes, and the newly released flocks of hollows.

"I'm sure that nobody will notice any different...at least not right away anyway," she said, somehow explaining everything with hand gestures while returning all her activated Rikka back to hairpin form.

"Good answer," he said grabbing her and picking her up with his right arm, catching her grossly off guard.

"EH? ! Hold up what are you doi-AH!-THAT TICKLES!-!-pleas-!," pleaded Orihime.

"Shut up! The quickest way out of this place is sonído!" responded Abdul, doing a sonído-powered tackling grab towards Chad since he knew the larger boy would resist getting picked up by him like he did the girl.

In an instant, the world was blurry, then focused for a second and then blurry again. Each time things refocused, they were getting higher and higher, as they were basically ricocheting back and forth from wall to wall. It was different than Orihime remembered being carried by Yoruichi with her shunpo since this was apparently something called 'Sonído'.

During one of the 'blur sequences', there was a large silver explosion as everything came to focus. They were in a dark desolate place with lots of giant bare trees, and it seems they had actually come out the base of one of the trees themselves. Except that tree dwarfed the others in comparison if their eyes weren't playing tricks on them.

"Ah! That was annoying, but I finally found the exit! Everything got narrower the higher we got so it was easy to find it actually. Now let's go to the desert!" said Abdul as he rushed toward the forest's canopy with the same speed, charging up a grey-silver energy blast from his mouth with his 'cargo' still in tow. A certain curly haired tan boy however was still humorously protesting his treatment of being carried.

* * *

><p><span>Mobilization: 0<span>

**5:01 AM**

A crescent moon shimmered in what was apparently a night sky, even though it was early morning. It was hard to distinguish between the two time periods anyways.

Billowing desert sands were omni-directionally eternal. Small hollow organisms roamed unnoticed, collecting reishi as sustenance. It all seemed orderly and simple, as if the same scene would continue going on for thousands of years without change. Right then, a giant beam of silver energy erupted out of the sands and beaconed into the sky.

"Hah!" grunted Abdul making a landing, and unceremoniously dropping his cargo on the ground. The carcass of former warden Xodri Halconero was under his left foot which he had used to carry it by clenching his claws tightly around the hollow's wrist at some point before skyrocketing out of the gaol.

Chad was still uncharacteristically grumpy from his treatment of what he considered 'being manhandled' as he stood up. Orihime was still on her knees getting sand out her eyes and mouth while Abdul was a couple feet in front of them, watching the hole he'd blasted refill itself naturally with sinking sand.

_"We should be alright for a while," _he thought before turning towards the two self-proclaimed 'tourists'.

"Alright," he started. "Enough is enough. Tell me the truth. What do you two really intend to do here. What's your true purpose, because that 'training' excuse is a bunch of-"

"Truth."

"Huh?"

"It's 'true', like I just said. But maybe I do need to give more details," said the girl grunting as she finally stood up and brushed herself off.

"I said before, we're just like you. All of us want to get stronger, and what better place to do it than a place full of enemies to improve our skills against? Sparring is good for what it is, but being put in real-life situations is that much better," explained Orihime looking back on her little sparring session with Chad earlier.

"If you want the absolute truth, it's that Sado-kun here and I need to extremely increase our strength in order to be of use in an important upcoming battle," explained Orihime referencing the 'Winter War' while being frugal with details. There was no need to go all in depth since she knew Abdul could care less about such specifics. He _had _only requested a general outline after all.

_"Important upcoming battle'? Huh? What's that all about? Once again I ask, what are these humans involved with? She talks as if there are more like them. Humans with powers that is. Are groups of humans with powers fighting each other or something? What the hell. I don't even remember the last time I was in the human world. Maybe I need to check things out! And I can tell that boy's weird disproportionate arm isn't just for show. So he does have powers after all,"_ thought Abdul observing Chad's still activated right arm. His curiosity was finally stabbing his remaining apathy from before in the heart and thus getting the better of him at last.

_"That's right! These humans think they're slick! They promised me some answers of my own if I answered there's! I recited a whole __darn__ textbook section for them about Menos hollows, and they're over there practically wearing sunglasses and looking mysterious! 'Important upcoming battle' my a-"_

"Whatever! I'll keep you two around since anywhere you go, you'll definitely attract all the good fights with those scents of yours," responded Abdul, cutting off his own mental rant.

The girl had for some reason summoned all her creatures during said mental rant, and perked up at Abdul's answer with a sparkle in her eyes.

_"I know that look by now,"_ thought Chad with uncertain dread and curiosity at why all six Rikka had been summoned.

"That's great! Because it's been on my mind ever since we talked about it down there; why are the hollows targeting cities around ours? Why when finding out that we had spiritual pressure did we become 'prime targets'?" she began, quoting Aloban's statement. Abdul looked on with quasi-interest.

"You gave us a lot of info, and we gave you a lot of info, and we still have a lot of explanations to give to you ourselves," continued Orihime.

_"Oh, and here I thought she forgot about her friend's little information swapping deal with me," _remarked Abdul in his head as Orihime continued speaking.

"But until then I've been thinking. About the one the warden-the one he was talking about that I think could help us put together the rest of the pieces," started Orihime, already out of breath from excitement as her points began culmination together.

"Let's go find them! Let's go rescue that shinigami!" she finished.

"…"

"…"

"…"

A near non-existent pause occurred while a billion thoughts ran through Abdul's head, but before he could retort, the girl's creatures did for her.

Together, three of them formed the triangular barrier from earlier and together flew under Orihime, tripping her, and expanded the yellow triangle to colossal sizes so that she wouldn't fall off.

"Excuse us all moment," politely said the Rikka captain Shun'ō with a enigmatic grin.  
>"We're kidnapping the woman, so get lost," scowled Tsubaki.<p>

"Um..sorry," timidly finished Ayame as the shield burst into the air before the girl even realized what was going on.

As the three remaining creatures simultaneously sped off in a burst of light in pursuit of the shield, the two remaining males on the ground took in the scene as the shield relentlessly ascended hundreds of meters high without rest.

"Hmmm?...You're all excused I guess. Ha! No problem with me! Gives me time to FINALLY sit down and eat properly. This moment has been months of starving in the making!" reasoned a pleased Abdul as he buzzed about fifteen meters away and became engrossed in his meal.

Chad stared up at the ever retreating form of Santen Kesshun as it became a small dot in the sky. "So the Rikka are finally making their move. I could tell they were upset about something back in the cell earlier, but..I mean what is it? For them to do something like this?...Just what are you up to...Shun'ō?"

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><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**

**Chapter Started: Jan 1, 2012; 6:30 PM est.  
>Chapter Finished: Feb 12, 2012; 9:51 PM est.<br>Revisions: Jan 1-Feb 25, 2012, 8:10 PM est.**

***Golden sphere of energy: see "Training with Hachi-sensei, part 2" omake/side story**

**General: **This is the 'Satellite' mini-arc. This mini-arc should end around chapters 14-16 if things go right and is one of a few mini-arcs that will make up a the grander arc of 'Pyramid Syndacite'. [Edit: (9/4/12), Since writing this author's note initially, this mini-arc has been confirmed to end on chapter 29. I'm just updating)

A lot of the 'areas' mentioned in this chapter will get further explanations when the plot allows me to explain them without spoilers. I promise. But for now:

-Piramidión: (Spanish for: 'Pyramidion') A certain location mentioned by Calibol.

-**División de Envío: (Spanish for: 'Dispatch Division') You should be able to tell they are basically 'mission control'. Together with all the Gillian under his control, Zoréno is in charge of this area. Sentient Gillian are like officers, while the mindless gillian do the grunt work like creating kūmons and shooting the Negación beams.

-El Centro: (Spanish for 'the center'). Zoréno mentions this area when saying to Calibol how he got a squad sent from there  
><span>-La Basurinera<span>: (Combined the Spanish words 'la basura'(the trash) and 'incinerador'(incinerator)

-Segunda Cárcel: (Spanish for: 'Second Gaol') A prison that houses captured targets.

P.S.: ***'Los Tranquilizantes' is Spanish for The Tranquilizers. It is the name of Aloban's squad that we saw Orihime and Chad fight last chapter and the name has relevance, which will again be explained later of course. Their squad number is #336.

As the arc goes along expect further details within the author's note on all of these areas, and new terms that pop up.

Trivia: To all those who care(yes I know nobody does) Shun'ō referenced Hinagiku's 'masked bandit' joke from the second chapter after Abdul called Tsubaki a 'wannabe pirate rip-off'. Yay for continuity. And poor Tsubaki's bandanna can't catch a break from the jokes. It even got sliced off in the battle against Fátima and somehow magically reappeared. Yay for discontinuity (actually, since the bandanna is literally part of his manifestation, it'll always come back after summoning him from his hairpin piece. The one Fátima cut off just disappeared into spirit particles).

* * *

><p><strong>MentionedIntroduced in Chapter 0Cs:**

**Unnamed rookie hollow squad:**

-Tolsá Verduga:The impressionable cheeky hollow with a sense of humor, but one can tell there is much more than meets the eye with this hollow's personality.

-Clara Trueba: The ostensibly narcissistic hollow with a sense of fashion and was disdained with her squad as she feels she is more 'mature' than her teammates. _She talks familiarly of her life as a human. _Her name comes from a book I believe is called The House of Spirits by Isabell Allende.

-Unnamed hollow:The sarcastic, snarky, hollow with an indifferent attitude to things, yet also has his own distinct sense of humor.

**The named Gillians of the Dispatch Division (some of them were unnamed):**

**-**Calibol: Cold calculating, business-only attitude. The type of person that needs to lighten up. But he is dissatisfied with his deadbeat job, and clings to reach higher heights while mocking those in his same position who he sees as sheep who have no chance of advancement. To him, they are sheep being herded. They are but cogs in the machine and he believes his intellect will help him ascend beyond that. As I am typing this I realize he's sort of an analogy for an office worker stuck in a cubicle who wants to climb the corporate ladder, or do something greater with their lives. His name is derived from Caliban from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'.

**-**Dámian: A foolish sentient Gillian who has a one-sided rivalry with Calibol. He is one of the ones that Calibol thinks of as sheep, yet Calibol tolerates his existence. It's like a really strange 'friendship'.

**Important OCs:**

**Xodri Halconero: **He was the precocious warden of Segunda Cárcel. I imagined him if he was a human to be a little younger than say Jinta or Karin&Yuzu pre-timeskip or even better, the same age as Ikumi's(Ichigo's boss) son Kaoru. Somewhere within that age-range really. His last name means 'Falconer' in Spanish. That'll come into play later, but know this. Xodri is a kid, and as Abdul pointed out, plays with his mindless Gillian like a kid would play with their toys or pets. I'm talking about that one kid you knew when you were little that had a ton of pet hamsters or gerbils. Or that one kid in your life that was obsessed with and played with bugs and insects. Either one of them is Xodri. You saw him perform a special technique this chapter.  
><span>"Offensive Gillian Technique (OGT) #1: 'Lluvia Sangrienta', (Spanish for: 'Bloody Rain')"<span>  
>Stay tuned for more development on that type of stuff. More will be revealed about Xodri post-mortem.<p>

R.I.P. Xodri…..oh wait.

**Abdul ****Tarragó: **A fearless Adjuchas...sort of like a variant of Chad's breed of fearlessness. He may seem simple, but is actually very complex as he isn't bounded by morals or principles. A moral relativist, but more on the existentialist side compared to Aloban who is a complete nihilist. This means that he also isn't blinded by things like 'honor' and 'pride' if in the end he gets what **he wants** and can be manipulative to do so. It also means, as alluded to in the chapter, that he is a firm proponent of what is basically 'carpe diem', as in he lives in the present, and thinks worrying about the future it pointless (one of his existentialist quirks). He's the loner type, as he got all the way to Adjuchas by his own strength so it's tough adapting to this 'team' thing Orihime has in mind, but again, he sees an advantage in getting what **he wants** by keeping both humans around. He's extremely perceptive. He's also very blunt and doesn't sugarcoat things because he thinks that's what idiots do.

* * *

><p>Character Profiles part 2 next chapter. Zoréno for example will get his profile when the time comes. I plan on the individual Rikka finally getting proper profiles as well. If you guys have any questions about the story, then ask me. Story is still technically on temp-hiatus. <strong>The release schedule of the chapters is slowly stabilizing<strong> from the death bomb that was releasing chapter seven early, and releasing chapter eight with no work on nine even started to pick up the slack for the huge gap in release times. Now I am doing something different. Writing my chapters on paper. That works so much easier for me. Before I would simply outline them, but now that I am in the AU, I feel I must detail everything when writing on paper(specific conversations, etc). So my outlines morphed into full on chapters sparing the more mundane details of a fully fledged typed chapter of course. Hopefully I can translate all I've written into typed text rather quickly.

I'm pretty paranoid with having stuff on paper because I feel something will happen to it. So yeah, temp-hiatus is still on...technically if that makes sense. Soon the release schedule from when I first published this story will be back. I simply published this chapter to start that stabilization, but yeah, still on temp-hiatus. **Expect said temp-hiatus to last at least until the weekend of June 9th or the weekend of June 16th at the earliest. 1st of July at the latest. Either of those dates will be when chapter ten lands.**

**Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.**


	10. The Lost Shinigami: Part 1

These are the first word's I'm typing of the chapter, and I hope to make shorter chapters from now on. Let's hope by the end of this chapter, things go as planned, because chapter nine just ballooned out of it's constraints, but I'm still very pleased with the results of both eight, and nine. As in pleased that I actually finished those monsters that is.

I enjoyed writing chapter nine especially, because of Abdul, and introducing some more AU concepts. I'm a hypocrite for _hating_ most OCs in fanfiction and disliking most AU stories in general (I said 'most', not 'all'), because I like my OCs and I like this story. I know the characters and the story aren't perfect and could definitely use a lot of work though.

This chapter and the next were originally one and have been split in two. They are composed of "sections" similar to chapter seven and nine. I won't tell you the names ahead of time like I did last chapter. Let's just say the name of the first section alone should give you a nice laugh. Anyway, the saga continues!

I don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.

Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.

More details and important info in the Author's Note. That is all.

* * *

><p>The Lost Shinigami<br>(Part One)

The Rikka Auxillary Board Meeting

**September 10th**

**5:03 AM. What is the conflict with the Rikka that both Orihime and Chad noticed back in the gaol? ! Why have they taken to the skies with Orihime in tow?**

The skin on Orihime's face looked like astronauts' or cosmonauts' when they launched into space. It was currently rippling from the pure G-force of Santen Kesshun's speed as it rocketed into the Hueco Mundo sky like a missile.

"Hey...Hey!...HEY! Hurry up and stop already. What-are you three trying to fly to the moon or something? !" shouted Tsubaki who'd flown up ahead of Ayame and Shun'ō.

"Yeah, why don't you fly up there and find us a nice landing spot," responded Hinagiku, as Santen Kesshun abruptly stopped.

Unfortunately, Orihime hadn't merged into the shield, and the inertia sent her careening through the night sky even higher.

"Are you serious? ! Fly up there and trap her into the shield!" yelled Tsubaki over the yells of the confused girl.

"Don't tell us how to do our job, Tsubaki! Quit yelling for once and everything'll be all right. I would've thought Abdul taught you as much by now," retorted Lily in the top corner of Santen Kesshun as the corner flew up and caught the careening Orihime, causing her to tumble back down near the bottom edge.

"You're not doing any kind of 'job' at all! And don't mention the guy who was actually trying _not_ to cry about getting his arm back. What a loser! His tough guy act doesn't fool me!"

"Um…yeah, that's right because you're actually a _real_ tough guy. Right 'wannabe pirate ripoff?" responded Hinagiku, quoting Abdul in a voice that signified eye-rolling.

"Oh God, you were actually doing great not yapping up until now, so go ahead and get a mouth-patch to match your eye-patch so you can just shut back up. And don't imply I think of myself as some stupid archetype!"

"Um...guys, I'd hate to interrupt, but Orihime's kind of,...yeah," said Shun'ō trailing off before flying up to the altitude with Ayame in tow, looking down at the girl who was lying on the now leveled Santen Kesshun.

She was completely out of it. Her eyes were exaggerated dizzy swirls, and her mouth agape.

"What do we do now?" asked Ayame with concern, looking at her wielder from inside her hood formed from her Rikka appendages.

"I'll tell you what we do! Stop joking around, woman!" yelled Tsubaki kicking Orihime square in the jaw. His tactics may seem obnoxious, but they definitely got the job done.

"Aaoow! Tsu-Tsubaki-kun!" yelled Orihime, jerking up and holding her chin.

"See, she was awake and just fine," responded the offensive Rikka in an unusually docile voice, while ignoring the ongoing whining of his wielder.

In a mere few seconds of her vision becoming less dizzy, she remembered just how the Rikka hijacked her conversation with Abdul and quickly looked around. Her eyes instantly transformed from swirls to doe-like.

"Whoa! W-we're so high up!" she said in astonishment rather than fear. But before any of the Rikka could retort, it was like she was on a mission as she began randomly rolling over to the shield's edge at inhuman speeds to apparently peer over the edge in her juvenile wonder. Given the girl's track record for clumsiness, let's just say this action didn't go over well with the Rikka's anxiety level, and caused more than half of them to dampen their clothes in a spontaneous nervous sweat.

Right when the edge was nearly in the grasp of her left hand, Baigon, in the corner of the shield to the right of her, flew up, causing Orihime to tumble back down towards the shield's center.

Landing on her head and back with a meek grunt, she managed to see Baigon's corner level back down with the rest of the triangular plane.

As she sat up with both hands on the shield behind her for support, she was facing his corner and saw the shield was much more expanded than normal. It's not as if she could see Baigon's face or anything either since he was still in 'flight mode' maintaining his corner of Santen Kesshun. The same went for Lily and Hinagiku.

Sitting up further in criss-cross position and rubbing the back of her bruised head, she saw that floating over the middle of each side and extending from Baigon's corner were Shun'ō on the left and Ayame on the right. Tsubaki was on the opposite side from her, looking smug.

Suddenly Baigon himself broke the silence.

"It's nice to see you've finally awoken, Orihime," stated the articulate and wise male Rikka.

"It's not like we could do this without her Baigon," answered Shun'ō, floating into a fixed position.

"So, you guys ready for this or what?" asked Lily.

"You should ask Orihime-san that question," responded Hinagiku.

"Her answer would be yes...we didn't have to go this far," answered Ayame meekly.

"Why don't we just see for ourselves then?" challenged Tsubaki.

Still rubbing her head, she snapped out of her daze.

"Huh? What are you guys talking abou-" she began before getting thrashed by a powerful gust of wind.

"W-wait a second! Why _are _we actually so high up anyways? !"

"I'll get right to the point. We need to discuss our relationship. To do that, we needed to get as far away from _those two_ as possible," began Shun'ō without his usual amused tone. "Being up here also means we don't run into any stray hollows on the desert to distract us."

Orihime took note of the Rikka captain's serious tone, and also how he said 'those two'.

"'Discuss...our relationship'?" questioned Orihime inquisitively.

"That's right," he answered simply.

Right then, Orihime noticed the expressions on Shun'ō and Ayame's faces. They were...upset or saddened? Even the Rikka in the corners were giving off uneasy vibes, which reminded her of the time back in their cell when they curiously emanated similar vibes, thus giving her a sudden realization.

_"T-that's what this is about!...it's why they brought me up here? What are they trying to do?" _she thought in concern.

"Alright Ayame, you're up," stated Shun'ō jolting Orihime out of her thoughts.

"Right," she answered, flying down level with Orihime's face before she threw back her large makeshift-hood revealing a bold expression.

"I...I still remember," she began, shaking off any remaining timidity. "I still remember when you came back from Soul Society. You were so ready to take on the world and to improve yourself. Even came up with great training ideas. But of course, the first arrancar attacks put things in view. 'Why am I thinking I'll be of use by training, when Kurosaki-kun gets stronger by fighting life or death battles? My leisurely way of going about things-merely training-is a joke,' I remember you thinking."

_"I never told her that. None of them were even out when I thought that...," _observed Orihime in silence.

Ayame swiftly continued, "Then Tsubaki's 'death' made that thought wrap around your mind. We all were sick with grief and didn't know what to do. And you seeing _us_ upset only made things worse for you," she said sadly at the end.

"But you said something back in Yokosuka that mesmerized us. At first awakening us to save Tatsuki-chan, we all helped you out a lot, with Shun'ō taking the lead role, but you said in Yokosuka that you felt you had 'to start contributing and trying to lead' yourself. We're all only 'guides' after all, but you're our wielder, our true leader. That's how we interpreted you saying that, and back during our deepest despair huddled in that sad position in the apartment, you showed that leadership quality.

"While the rest of us were hopeless—no help at all, you alone brought us all back to the park to try and find a piece of Tsubaki to heal him, but when you failed, you sunk even further."

Orihime remembered that lower than low feeling. It was only about six days ago, but it felt much longer. Still, she wondered where Ayame was heading with this as she braced against the powerful gusts of wind.

"But it was only yesterday afternoon that Ushōda-sensei and Kuchiki-san brought you back up and made you happy again. With Kuchiki-san, not only did she help us gain new resolve, but she helped you use everything that was going against you for even more resolve. But even before that, you already knew you'd do whatever it took to get Tsubaki back," continued Ayame.

"O-of course. Even if I'd submitted to Urahara-san's plan, or even never fought alongside Kurosaki-kun, Sado-kun, or Ishida-kun again—if I was completely isolated from the world of hollows and shinigami that Urahara-san himself opened the doors to, I was still getting Tsubaki-kun back!" responded Orihime with conviction.

"Of course," began Shun'ō, speaking up, "you could say that while Kuchiki-san restored our _will_ to actually fight, Hachi gave us the _means_ to do so by restoring Tsubaki and giving us a framework for just how we should go about doing it. We knew we wanted to get stronger, and he gave us a path to walk on. We really owe them both so much," continued Shun'ō.

_"Yeah...we really do. After leaving Hachi-sensei, I left Kuchiki-san outside the Visored's warehouse. I refused to look back at her face, and I promised to get stronger. Only then can I see her face again. Actually, back then I was thinking about Kurosaki-kun when I said it, but I mean it for everyone now._ _Then the next time we meet, Urahara-san, Kuchiki-san, Hachi-sensei, Kurosaki-kun, everyone; when we meet again, I'll be next to you so I won't even see your backs. That way you'll see how much I've grown. I tried giving Tarragó-san a reason for my not wanting to return home, but truthfully I can't show my face in Karakura until I've reached that point!"_

Meanwhile, during her thoughts, Shun'ō had still been speaking, but Orihime had still been listening.

"With Tsubaki back, you had finally had a plan alongside a place and purpose, and you were mentally unbeatable You even got Sado-san out of his own slump and made him see things our way. But that's when the hollows appeared just a few hours ago. For the most part, our opponent had a lot of advantages, but our techniques won out in the end. Even still, by the fight's end, we were turning the knob on death's door. Her abilities were so dangerous to us, and that was her downfall. Because her 'Glotón Semilla' ended up tampering with your soul sleep, it opened up a small window of opportunity for you to access your full life force. Actually you had no say or control of the matter; it just exploded as if the poison popped a hole in your soul sleep like a balloon.

"You used that window of opportunity to trap the hollows and use Koten Zanshun-Shō. That alone nearly ripped the seams of your soul. We all felt it. You may not have realized, but If you hadn't finished using that same rush of energy to do Sōten Kisshun, you would've be dead!" continued Shun'ō getting emotional. Ayame simply looked on solemnly.

"I mean even with that being the strongest Sōten Kisshun you've ever done, you _still_ passed out and nearly went comatose! We don't even know what these hollows did to you while you were unconscious! When you summoned us during your sleep in the cell, you were so pale it looked like we were healing a dead body! How do you think that made _us_ feel?" vented the Rikka captain.

"Our 'healing' was so weak all we managed to do was barely wake you up. We didn't even know what happened to you or where you were because we'd been out of commission ourselves! Only after we realized Sado-san was awake and with us did we begin calming down," added Ayame.

Orihime was shocked at these revelations. They'd revealed as much back in the cell, but not with this much detail. They'd been damaged and in the form of warped hairpins, a sign of over-exerting her soul. Same with Ichigo's Zanpakutō after he fought the Menos Grande. All she could do was stare at her Rikka as they continued venting their apparent pent-up emotions.

"You said before that you were 'leisurely' wasting time with training before the arrancar attacks, but ever since then, even after Tsubaki's 'destruction' and your failure to restore him you've stepped up to the plate. Meanwhile, we've still been stuck in our own 'leisurely' phase as simply being mindless vessels for kotodama!" shouted Hinagiku speaking up from behind Orihime in the back left corner of Santen Kesshun.

"Don't you get it? We've completely failed you as Rikka!"

Normally, Orihime would pass this off as Hinagiku's normal over-dramatics, but his sorrow in saying it pierced Orihime's heart and his statement really threw her off.

"What? What are you talking abou-," she was at a loss for words in how to respond.

"We've failed to properly support you in preparing for powerful enemies like arrancar, And nearly dying against a mere normal hollow earlier was much more than a smack to our faces!" further explained Hinagiku.

"...You said before how you were jealous of Rukia...for-for cheering up Kurosaki-ku-I mean Ichigo," began Lily this time in the back-right corner of the shield. Her voice lacked her former spunk and enthusiasm. It was replaced by a voice of a fearful guilty person admitting their crime. The reminder to Orihime of her prior feelings towards the Kuchiki girl unnerved her once more as the pink-haired Rikka continued.

"...Well, how do you think _I_ felt when _she_ cheered _you_ up? !" cried Lily.

Orihime had her head turned around looking at Lily's corner with saucer eyes. Her mind had been effectively blown. She knew more than anyone how wise and sentient the Rikka were. They were wiser than her. But for the Rikka to personally have these individual types of thoughts that so closely mirrored her own?

"I-I was so happy, so happy that you were happy. Your emotions have effect on us after all. Just what did you think that 'depression party' in the apartment we had a couple days ago was all about? !" remarked Lily with a little of her usual wit seeping through. "I was happy that that she completely revived you. I truly was. But I was jealous. Jealous that it was something I couldn't do."

For that moment Orihime felt like she'd heard a recording of her own words. Whether it was intentional on Lily's part or coincidental, Orihime was floored either way as if she were truly seeing herself in each of the Rikka for the first time.

"I felt the same," admitted Ayame meagerly with her hood back on after seeing Lily's braveness. "Even to the point of..of disliking Kuchi...," she trailed off with tears forming in her eyes at channeling the horrible foreign emotions into words.

"It's not just that," started up Shun'ō putting his arms around Ayame. "As great as those two were, adding to what Hinagiku said, even I felt that at least the emotional support should have come from us during the period Tsubaki was gone. Even though we wanted Tsubaki back as bad as you, all we managed to do was bring you down," he continued looking Orihime dead in the face as he calmed down.

_"You guys..,"_ thought Orihime tearing up.

"But notice how we're all using past tense. Those were past emotions. There's no resentment. It's like Baigon said before the new trimester of school started, 'there's a difference between relying only on yourself and shouldering your burdens alone, or depending fully on others while not being able to help yourself as opposed to middle solution of being able to support yourself, but still not shouldering burdens all alone.' Clearly **you've** achieved the latter option, Orihime, with being able to share your burdens and support yourself while if **we'd** had our way with all our jealousy and insecurities, we would have ended up like the first option. But now that ends now. It's time for us to properly support you ourselves," finished Shun'ō motivationally with his voice almost cracking.

"That's right!" said a voice directly above and behind her. It was Tsubaki floating high above the side that connected Lily and Hinagiku's corners.

"So we're holding you to the promise you made to the Kuchiki woman last night before you went to Hachi's. That 'you would get stronger and surpass anyone, anything and everything that beats you, and improve til' you can take on any challenge on your terms.' Ring any bells?"

As if on cue, the bells sounded off in Orihime's head. "_Yeah, I did say that. He changed my wording a little, but that's definitely what I meant,"_ thought Orihime now turned around looking at Tsubaki, sitting down with her back turned to Ayame and the others.

"You say you want to be able to walk with your friends instead of behind them by being able to help out, but once again you're thinking about things the wrong way!* It's time to stop simply aiming to 'be of use' or only 'not being a burden'!," continued Tsubaki.

Hinagiku picked up the tab. "You promised to be strong enough for any challenge but that means you have to not only be able to help out or 'be of use to' the others in any scenario, but also have the ability to be self-sufficient and possibly fight even the strongest enemies by yourself if the situation calls for it."

Orihime listened intently to everyone's words.

"These guys are over-explaining things aren't they. Let me put it simpler terms Orihime. Try following me on this," said Lily, taking the reins.

"Think of yourself as a character in a story. You basically need to be able to switch on demand from the supportive character, to the main character if the time calls for it. And between all of us, the time's been screaming for it. You pretty much took on the role of a protagonist in this 'story' when you went to find Chad, and then the hollows showed up. And of course with them being the _first_ 'antagonists', they were a huge challenge. Especially the one we fought against. And why? Because she used the very same two fighting styles Hachi warned us about! Except she practically had them combined together!"

Hinagiku being sort of a master analyst, jumped on the bandwagon at this. "Exactly! With those thorns that came off her body almost functioning like swords, she had some kind of unique zanjutsu/hand to hand fighting style. That along with her 'Glotón Semilla' abilities, her durability, and high speed movement..or sonído as Tarragó-san has termed it, were our biggest issues."

Despite Orihime's lack of vocal responses throughout this whole conversation, Shun'ō could see her visual responses. She was thinking about everything that was being said, and simply letting the Rikka vent and get everything off their chest. With that understanding, he continued.

"Hinagiku is right about what he said just now and everything he said earlier. The fight was a major wake up call for all of us as Rikka. It's clear you must develop your own fighting styles and techniques to directly counter zanjutsu, hand-to-hand, and high speed movement of any kind while being able to adapt to any unique ability of our opponents. To be specific, we must expand our Rikka techniques even further. Don't you think there have to be more than three kotodamas we can perform? I doubt we automatically reached our maximum kotodama potential right when we awakened. You said it yourself when we got back from Soul Society so there must be more just waiting to be developed.

"But to prepare you in the short-term for more hollows, let alone arrancar, we've agreed that we must break out of our 'leisurely' molds and be more than the 'affectionate floating vessels for kotodama' that we've been up to now. Now, we're taking charge," finished the Rikka captain with renewed enthusiasm.

Orihime was astounded. _"They actually thought all this through?"_ Little did she know, they were just getting started.

"Yeah that's right!" shouted Lily with renewed spunk. "That's why we sort of formed 'committees' for each area we need to get better in, and they sort of connect with our natural ability as Rikka. For example since we were inspired by your creativity, Baigon, Hinagiku and I want to help find even more uses for Santen Kesshun than you've already come up with. From ways to use it in new situations, to countering enemy attacks, to more kidō integration; just leave it to us! It's our turn to help out!

"Yeah, yeah, that's good and all, but we all know what the woman needs to work on is speed," said Tsubaki, turning from looking at Lily to Orihime. "You've improved, but you still lack basic skills! If you even had a fraction the speed that walking knife-factory called a hollow had, then the fight would've been over the moment she first tried attacking you."

Shun'ō just had to interject right there. "Orihime, you asked Tsubaki before if increasing his speed or cutting power would be easier and he told you 'the speed, of course'. As if that were a challenge since then you two have been way too focused on cutting power until you're now actually relying on Shō to increase your speed, but only for the purpose of increasing the cutting power even further. It's time to do like you also said back then. 'To equally increase strength and speed at the same time once you got more advanced'. With that, eventually Tsubaki will reach Shō-level speeds without you even using Shō, while at the same time not sacrificing cutting power. That way Orihime, you can compensate for your _own _personal lack of any type of high speed movement until you can develop your own. But as of now, consider Tsubaki to also be the 'speed committee', soon to be 'high speed movement committee' along with the 'offensive committee'."

At this Tsubaki began speaking in a matter-of-fact tone. "The same principle for using Koten Zanshun at it's strongest applies to all offensive techniques. The right vitality, mentality and 'killing intent'—or as you like to sugar-coat it woman thanks to Baigon, 'resolve',"** continued Tsubaki almost chuckling under his breath. "Since you use me for Koten Zanshun, I'm gonna further instruct you on having the right mindset when using any type of offensive technique so that you never falter again...like you did against Yammy."

Orihime looked up at Tsubaki who simply had his eyes closed with his arms crossed as he floated among the gusts of wind. He really did have a knack for remembering the names of enemies who had injured him. First Jidanbō's brother and now Yammy. What got her was that he seemed to not care in the least that he was injured or destroyed, but that she had faltered and had been in danger. She began to contemplate on this, but the Rikka weren't even finished yet at all.

Lily cheerily continued to conversation after the pause. "Speaking of what Tsubaki said about lacking basic skills, let's flip it and talk about what two things you're amazing at; first, your near-perfect reiatsu control! But, it's not completely perfect of course. We basically ran out of reiatsu after the fight after all. You don't have a black hole of reiryoku like Ichigo, so you have to conserve every last drop and use the exact minimum amount of energy needed for every technique you use. That way, you can stretch your reiatsu so much further, along with training to increase the actual reiastu you can produce. Second, you're sensing abilities are also something you're amazing at. That's why you can develop it even further and learn to analyze an enemy's spiritual pressure, and reiatsu composition of their attacks on the spot like you already started to do during the spar with Chad. Then you can better counter attacks, thus saving more energy. So in charge of helping you out with this 'energy efficiency and conservation' stuff are Ayame, Hingagiku, and I. We're here for you."

Orihime was effectively overwhelmed. "W-wow…I don't know what to say you guys...you weren't kidding when you said you planned to help out more, but this is so much…wait, Shun'ō...why aren't you on any 'committee'?"

Shun'ō seemed caught off guard as he responded by waving his hand dismissively "O-Oh me? I'm helping with healing with Ayame of course. But with her helping with your energy efficiency already, it carries over into how you use Sōten Kisshun anyways. With the same ideas Lily explained, we need to work on how to efficiently heal injuries. We're in Hueco Mundo, which means hollow related injuries. You had trouble healing Sado-san's wound from the arrancar Yammy's attack, and the winter war will be nothing but arrancar. You already healed Abdul just fine, so your progress is looking nice, but our healing also involves restoring reiatsu to the injured. Abdul didn't get restored to his max because you're not at your max either. We're all still recovering.

"But that's beside the point. Did you see how I advised Tsubaki earlier on speed? Not only am I helping Ayame with healing, but I'm on all the 'committees', including the final one."

_"A final one?" _thought Orihime. The fact that it was 'final' made it sound important. Like saving the best for last.

"Yes. The 'General Improvement Committee' headed up by Hinagiku, Baigon, and I. With Hinagiku's analytical skill, Baigon's wisdom, and my leadership, we're supervising the general direction of your development with input from the others. But besides basic oversight, just like the Kesshun Rikka were inspired by your creative use of Santen Kesshun, our actual main function is furthering something you yourself started, Orihime."

This intrigued Orihime to no end. Something that's apparently this important to the Rikka was originally her brainchild in the first place?

"What? What is it?" she questioned with pure curiosity.

"Shared consciousness."

With those words, it seemed like the sky stopped blowing and temperature became non-existent.

"So you've noticed it, haven't you? Ayame remembering your exact thoughts earlier, even though you'd never directly told her. All of us always commenting on your thoughts as if you'd said them right to us. Tsubaki somehow knowing everything that happened while he was destroyed, including your plan to train with Sado-san. You asked why he knew, but he didn't know himself. We've always sort of just known everything about you by default, but you never know much about us. That's why you started having us out more, to get 'closer' to us. To understand us more so that you'd get stronger similar to how a shinigami does with their Zanpakutō. But there's more. What about you_ 'remembering'_ me telling you that we're not 'apparently all-knowing like a zanpakutō?' I specifically told Ayame that when we were sitting outside of Sado-san's house when you sent us to heal him, but you recalled it like a relative memory!"

Orihime took everything in with stride and surprise on the last point. _"Is it really getting stronger? How long ago did I have that memory in my head? Was it all the way back then or just recently when I thought about it back in the cell? It's crazy if I think about it! Shun'ō knew without __me __telling __him __that I remembered something __he __didn't tell __me__,"_ thought Orihime trying to make a sort of time-line of events in her head of when she could've acquired the memory.

"Then there's something you realized yourself mid-battle. When you had all of us out at the same time, you were suddenly able to keep up with Fátima's speed better as if you had some kind of sixth sense."

_"Yeah, I remember. It was after I flew out the river on Santen Kesshun and she followed me and attacked,"_ reminisced Orihime.

"Of course, there's Fátima's seed that she shot into your stomach that rooted itself in your spiritual and physical body. It affected not just you, but all of us. We were flickering unstably from what it was doing to your spiritual power, and we could even feel your cold sweat and your pain as if we were empaths. But you can feel things that happen to us too. Your being able to feel us healing Sado-san that day, even though you were on the other side of town 'speaking' with Sora, the hollow feeling in your stomach you got as soon as Tsubaki was destroyed, and similar feelings to that caused by Aloban's weird brief effect on Tsubaki and momentarily losing the ability to sense Santen Kesshun along with Baigon and the others due to Fátima stabbing it with her tail; bla-bla-bla and it goes on and on."

All the scenes flooded back into the girl's mind as he continued.

"Of course, you would've felt those things especially that third to last part. After Tsubaki was destroyed, we all were kind of 'out of it'. We're all one soul, and we're all connected. It's a complex relationship that would drive Freud insane, but it is what it is and we intend to work together with your help and continue figuring out about ourselves. There's lots to learn, but you already knew that much when we were back in Yokosuka," finished the blonde Rikka.

"The point is Orihime," began Baigon causing Orihime to look at his corner. The male Rikka barely spoke. Even less that Chad used to be, so whenever he spoke, he obviously had something to say.

"You must realize that just like we want you to focus on being more than just 'enough to not be in the way', we're also planning on not being satisfied just setting goals and benchmarks of beating mere hollows or arrancar. We're setting the bar impossibly high, and you will have to work if you want to reach it. Let alone push yourself over it. Because just like your promise to Rukia Kuchiki in a literal sense, we will get strong enough until we can beat **'everything'**."

_"'Setting the bar high'? I get it now. They felt they 'failed me' and weren't doing their jobs right so now they're trying to push me like a Zanpakutō does their Shinigam-..wait, what does he mean by 'everything'? Well, he sort of was quoting me..shouldn't I know myself?"_

Before Orihime could question any further all the Rikka answered one right after the other in serious voices.

"Do you know what that means Orihime? It means you'll be able to defeat hollows," started Baigon.

"Arrancar," said Lily.

"Shinigami," said Ayame.

"Visored," followed Tsubaki.

"Quincies," continued Hinagiku.

"and most importantly," "definitely," "finally," "without a doubt," "lastly,"

Orihime awaited the final word, but it never came, before she violently sweat-dropped.

"...Wait a second, what? ! Who? What else is there? You named everything. Every possible thing-," she continued rambling on. Apparently the Rikka had some sick kick for dramatic pauses something, but they finally interrupted Orihime's confused rant with a assortment simultaneous of answers that nearly made her fall off the shield post-said rant.

"Chad."

"Chad."

"Sado-san."

"Sado-kun."

"Sado."

"Yasutora Sado."

"Eh? !" was all she could get out. She wasn't expecting that answer at all. She'd _mainly_ asked for a 'what' and they named a 'who'. Plus, in the back her mind she noticed almost all the Rikka called him something different. Just what did that say about her relationship with her classmate and friend?

"Don't be blinded, Orihime. Since the day both of you awakened your powers, Chad has at least been your biggest comrade in terms of similar circumstances. You told him that specifically yourself back after we found him training in the river earlier. Now the situations have forced you both to become closer nakama, but in turn, that also makes him your biggest rival," explained Lily matter-of-factly.

Orihime never considered herself the competitive type, but she had to admit that sparring on even grounds with Chad was like nothing she ever felt before. It was much different than sparring with Tatsuki, since the female karateka was more of a teacher than a sparring partner. If the Rikka truly were the manifestation of her inner-most soul, they also then channeled her inner most emotions she had long since forgotten and ignored. That's why it was something about the way Lily said it, that when she did, it just clicked in her mind as inherently true.

Plus it's not like she had any particular desire to fall behind Chad in strength level, but it just didn't seem like a competition to her. She just wanted to be strong.

"I _guess_ if anyone I know can be considered a rival, then it's definitely Sado-kun after all," thought Orihime in contemplation before her face turned into a frown as a particularly bone-chilling gust of wind practically pushed her soul out her body and off the shield, while mercifully freezing her at the same time so she wouldn't have to experience the deadly plummet to the desert.

"S-ss-s-o cold," complained the girl with X's for eyes going into a shivering fetal position. Her school uniform was still wet from the river so it was at the point where it felt like the wind was blowing through her.

"What the? ! You're just now feeling it? What were you doing all this time? Wait, what are you doing walking around here in the school uniform anyway?" asked Tsubaki.

"What is she supposed to do, Tsubaki? Get out her dresser and pick out some cloth-...Wait a second, that's right! The clothes in the bag!" exclaimed Lily.

However, the vastly freezing Orihime was already far ahead of the arguing Rikka, and had already pulled out, and laid out the clothes she had brought with her in the black drawstring bag. They were still incredibly damp from when she'd been kicked into the river by Fátima. Being inside the bag, they never got to dry as much as her school uniform had.

"If I put these on, I'll really ice over," whined Orihime.

"Huh? Don't worry. Sado-san and Abdul are probably wondering where we are, so we're going back down to the desert after this. I guess I never made it really clear when we finished our little discussion. All right. 'Meeting adjourned!' Heh, I've always wanted to say that," said an amused Shun'ō before his demeanor changed to a serious one.

"Plus, I advise you to put those on. I have a feeling that after this, you aren't getting any more breaks or rest," he said warily.

"Yeah, probably not," agreed Orihime getting into a similar mood as the Rikka captain, concentrating about what was about to possibly take place as if she were mentally preparing herself. Quickly she stripped herself of the damp uncomfortable clothing, and prepared to put on the damper, yet comparatively comfy clothes.

"You know, Orihime, there was more than just clothes in that bag. If this really is our last break, then why not take out the-"

"Because I don't need it. I already know all I need right now," interrupted Orihime, but not in a rude way.

"How can you say that? We need to do everything we can t-"

"Because, there's no more time to waste. How about I use it after we find who we're looking for. It'd be better to have it out when they're around, and besides," she said calmly, standing up as her hair rippled violently in the wind.

She paused and closed her eyes as she imagined hollows like the ones they had fought hours ago last night, coming out of kūmons and capturing innocent humans who never see it coming. She saw similar scenes in different places with different people all over the world. She slowly opened her piercing eyes brim with emotion, yet continued to talk calmly.

"To me these hollows have two purposes. To give us answers. And if they don't, to provide as warm-ups for the winter war."

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><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

_This chapter is part one of what used to be one big chapter. My beta wisely told me to split it._

* -Tsubaki always explaining how Orihime is going the wrong way about something harks back to chapter 2  
>** -Tsubaki referencing chapter 2's omake.<p>

**General: **This is the 'Satellite' mini-arc. I must amend things from the last author's note. As my chapters are now vastly brief and shorter now that we are out of the introductory arc which ended chapter 8, this mini-arc should end somewhere in the 20s if things go right, and is one of a couple of mini-arcs that will make up a the grander arc of 'Pyramid Syndacite'.

Need a visual aid for exactly how Orihime and the Rikka were positioned this chapter? I made a visual aid:

fc05 dot deviantart dot net / fs71/ i / 2012 / 182 / e / c / sk_chapter_10_by_p_and_t-d55jyrr . j p g

This website doesn't allow you to post full URLs. So, remove all the spaces and add a dot where it says 'dot' both after 'fc05' and before 'net' and then you'll have the full URL. The page "p - and - t . deviantart dot com" is also where I will post visual aids and diagrams in the future.

A lot of the 'areas' mentioned last chapter will get further explanations and visual aids when the plot allows me to explain them without spoilers. I promise. But for now let's have a refresher that's more in depth than the last author's note since it's been so long since I updated:

-Piramidión(Spanish for: 'Pyramidion'): A certain location mentioned by Calibol(one of the sentient Gillians in the beginning of last chapter).

-División de Envío: (Spanish for: 'Dispatch Division') Colloquially called 'Dispatch'. You should be able to tell they are basically 'mission control' of this 'base'. Together with all his Gillian under his control, the adjuchas Zoréno is in charge of this area. Of all the Gillian he controls, the "Sentient Gillian" are like officers each with a station and some have their own "Mindless Gillian" subordinates who do the grunt work like creating kūmons and shooting the Negación beams.

-El Centro: (Spanish for 'the center'). Zoréno mentions this area when saying to Calibol how he got a squad sent from here. More will be explained in chapter eleven.

-La Basurinera: (Combined the Spanish words 'la basura'(the trash) and 'incinerador'(incinerator). This is the area Aloban's defeated team were placed as ordered by Zoréno.

-Segunda Cárcel: (Spanish for: 'Second Gaol') A prison that houses captured targets. Orihime, Chad, and Abdul all escaped from this prison together in chapter nine after slaying the warden Xodri Halconero and basically inciting a prison riot.

-'Los Tranquilizantes' is Spanish for The Tranquilizers. It is the name of Aloban's squad that we saw Orihime and Chad fight in chapter eight and the name has relevance, which will again be explained later of course. Their squad number is #336.

Next chapter will introduce some new characters, and a little more explanation of where exactly this is all taking place so stay tuned.

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><p><strong>Character Profiles Part 2:<strong>

In the first character profile segment in chapter eight, we did a look at the group of hollows known as **Los Tranquilizantes**. With this chapter, it's high time for another group called the **Shun Shun Rikka **to all get their appropriate character profiles. As the Rikka are all part of Orihime's soul, their unique sentient personalities are a manifestation and thus an indicator of Orihime in some way, shape or form.

The following also explains all the little sub-groups introduced in the chapter.

**Kisshun Duo:** These two form Sōten Kisshun together. They are dedicated to improve the efficiency of energy use during healing along with the speed.

-Shun'ō: This blonde top-knotted Rikka is the bona fide captain of the Shun Shun Rikka. Tsubaki thinks he's too soft when actually, subliminally, Shun'ō is the toughest on Orihime. As leader, he is Orihime's "right hand" Rikka and guide by default. He wants to help Orihime develop to take the rightful place as leader as she is the wielder of the Rikka after all. As Captain, he is actually learning as he goes along. And unlike a zanpakutō, he doesn't seem to be omniscient. He's vaguely eccentric and keeps some things mysteriously to himself, but with his subtle wit, and occasional mental wise-cracks, he has the well-balanced personality to keep together the host of rambunctious egos that are the rest of the Rikka.  
><span>Committees:<span> _'General Improvement Committee' with Baigon and Hingiku._ _Shun'ō is automatically on all other committees as an advisor(even though he is not listed on them, he is on there by default since he is the Rikka captain)._

-Ayame: Shy and always covered what seems to be her Rikka appendages functioning as a giant hood over her pink dress. Being part of the Shun Shun Rika and thus Orihime's soul, she symbolizes the manifestation of Orihime's shyness, timidness, and self doubt. The latter can be seen as a lack of confidence, however, Ayame conversely symbolizes the key to self-confidence. She is simply manifests a "necessary self-doubt". In other words, a counterbalance to arrogance, and once again a _key_ to humble strength and power. She wished for Orihime to be as strong as possible and actually has one of the most fiery wills on the Rikka team, however low-key it is. Always offering encouraging words and gives good advice from her heart. She is mostly seen and heard speaking with Baigon or Shun'ō, but talks to others as well. She and Lily consider themselves 'special comrades' as they are the only female manifestations among the Rikka. She has a special connection with Tsubaki and can easily talk to Hinagiku about his obscure topics of interest as well. All the Rikka are naturally close really, and as such, all care deeply for Orihime.  
><span>Committees:<span> _'Energy Efficiency&Conservation' along with Hinagiku and Lily._

**Kesshun Krew aka 'The Wall':** The trio that when used together, Orihime uses to make Santen Kesshun. Inspired by Orihime's initiative in the battle against the hollow Fátima Aragón, their focus is manipulating the shield in new and creative ways to better defend Orihime. As well as working specifically on ways to better defend against Zanjutsu, any close-combat, Hohō, or energy attacks(like cero's or kidō) used by any type of enemy or threat. These three are interested in more kidō integration.

-Baigon: Very wise and rational. Calm and straightforward. While Shun'ō is the leader of the Rikka, Baigon is the 'spiritual' figure of the Rikka. While Ayame is the manifestation of a "necessary self-doubt" and humbleness, Baigon represents rationale, a lack of judgmental nature, and "cool-headedness". He is always ready to give Orihime advice and ideas. Silent and righteous. Unquestionable loyalty to Orihime, and extreme pride in the abilities of the Shun Shun Rikka. He believes, but not in an elitist way that they are a top tier unique and special ability unlike hollows or shinigami. The other Rikka have similar sentiments in their own ways. He gets respect from all the Rikka, most notably Tsubaki, but Shun'ō is still the unquestionable leader. And Tsubaki may act the way he does, but he respects all the Rikka. As part of the 'General Improvement Committee', he plays a key part in further developing the 'Shared Consciousness' ability and general oversight of the trajectory of Orihime's development as a whole.  
><span>Committees:<span>_ 'General Improvement Committee' with Shun'ō and Hinagiku._

-Hinagiku: Personality-wise, he is the black-sheep of the Rikka. Academically brilliant. A savant; genius even. Master tactician. Extremely resourceful and logical, but could come off as elitist to some although he's not. He's comically easily offended which may point to some subconscious insecurity. However, he's actually really sweet and awkward. He specializes with coming up with the more technical abilities and moves with expert precision. He has ruthless opinions on course of actions at times if Orihime is threatened or at danger. As Hinagiku, he symbolizes or represents the manifestation of Orihime's logical and resourceful(creative) side. The latter might be why his appearance seems extreme compared to even the other Rikka's appearances. It's merely speculative to if he even has the aforementioned 'subconscious insecurity', but if he does, then that is also linked to Orihime.  
><span>Committees:<span>_ 'General Improvement Committee' with Shun'ō and Baigon._  
><em>'Energy Efficiency&amp;Conservation' along with Ayame and Lily.<em>

-Lily: Fiery, hardlined, spunky, and all with a sometimes sarcastic sense of humor. Don't let this these apparent generic archetypes fool you. While Baigon is the 'spiritual' figure of the Rikka, Lily is 'the heart'(don't make jokes just yet readers). By 'heart' it means that she is enthused and supportive, and extremely determined, but unlike the other Rikka, is very much more extroverted with all of these traits. She hates losing(as in when Orihime loses in a battle) and wants to get stronger until they(Orihime and the Rikka collectively) beat everyone they ever lost to, and get stronger to beat anyone else who could come up against them. She's one to set new goals at each milestone. The type of person that would risk her life for Orihime if she could, even though she knows the action would be fruitless. She cares about the actual well-being and mental state of Orihime(as shown in this chapter). Each Rikka will contribute great ideas and concepts for Orihime's development, but Lily is basically over "Reiatsu & Energy Conservation and Efficiency". With all of this, she is like the manifestation of Orihime's "spunk", and the more extreme side of her imagination which makes her similar to Hinagiku in that respect(along with her more extreme appearance). In other words, she can at times seem and act much like her wielder Orihime(minus the ditziness) with the way she speaks so openly with her mind and ideas(imagination). As such, she is very creative which is why she can come up with ideas so easily in the first place.  
><span>Committees:<span>_ 'Energy Efficiency&Conservation' along with Ayame and Hingaku._

**Solitary Sharp Shooter:** Orihime uses this Rikka to use her sole offensive attack, Koten Zanshun(孤天斬盾meaning: Solitary Sacred Cutting Shield).

-Tsubaki: As the only Rikka out of all the others that deals with offense, he is the manifestation of Orihime's latent emotions, anger, willpower and killing intent if we get specific. Being a key member of the 'Offensive Comitte' along with Shun'ō(by default), Tsubaki coaches offensive mentality and vitality even on a fundamental level. As in how Orihime can have a certain mindset during any sort of offensive attack so that they don't falter and are instead stronger. This applies to Orihime's Hadō kidō development as well. Tsubaki is also on the 'Speed Committee(tentative title)'. This Rikka has a very combative personality. At times his criticism of Orihime may seem harsh, but she doesn't take it the wrong way. She knows it is his way of caring. Like Hinagiku, he is also a pretty decent tactician. While Hinagiku covers overall battle tactics, Tsubaki specializes in offensive tactics.  
><span>Committees:<span>_ 'Offensive' and 'Speed(tentative title)'._

* * *

><p><strong>Any questions about any of the text above, leave them in a review.<br>Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.**


	11. The Lost Shinigami: Part 2

Before we begin, does anybody remember the dream sequence Orihime had in chapter nine at the beginning of the section called 'Flash Point'? It contained a lot of thematic symbolism pertaining to the story, so if you don't understand, I'll just tell some obvious things to help you. In the dream, Orihime was obviously the princess(that was basically given), the raven haired man with spectacles was Uryū, the man with long orange hair and amber eyes was Ichigo(coincidentally with a mullet like his V2 hollow form he used against Ulquiorra no less). The tan mesomorphic man with curly hair was Chad. The monster from the previous occurrence with green scaly skin and blades coming off its body in multiple spots and a mask with scaly designs on it? This was the hollow Orihime fought in chapter eight.

Except in this dream it wasn't really a hollow...just a giant monster. Now that you know all this, you can go back and read the dream sequence in a new light with new understanding so you can see all the thematic symbolism. I'll give you a symbol right here though. It's not really a thematic one, but more of a insert/reference. When the princess in the dream goes out to help the guards fight this same monster she had a triangular metal shield (coughSantenKesshuncough). So yeah, go re-read that segment in your free time after you read this chapter. _And as always, check out this chapter's author's note for important stuff._

I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. That is all.

* * *

><p>The Lost Shinigami<br>(Part Two)

Hunting Gazelle

**September 10th**

**5:17 AM. Orihime had been taken to the skies by her Rikka, Abdul is finishing up his little "snack", and Chad seems to be doing some experimentation of sorts.**

Chad sat criss-crossed on the desert sand with a deactivated arm. He was looking at his palms intensively. Slowly he places them over the sand and for about the thousandth time and observes the nuanced ripples forming in the sand as a result.

_"There it is again. I feel like my head is buzzing and my body is getting phantom sensations, like there's some rustling inside me or something. What's going on?"_

Some heavy footsteps were heard behind him. Slightly turning his head, he saw one of the large navy-indigo five-toed feet of Abdul. Four large toes in the front, and an even larger toe coming off the back heel. Each donned with silver claws.

"You know, no matter how much you put your hands to the sand as if it were one, it's never going to become a fireplace kid."

Suddenly, a small lizard-like creature popped out the ground.

"Heh, I was wondering when one of those would pop out," commented the adjuchas as it burrowed back into the sand, seemingly in fear of either Abdul or Chad.

"Hm. I've never seen a hollow that small before," stated a wide-eyed Chad.

"Ha, were you scared it was going to eat your soul or something? Those things are so weak all they have to do is breathe in the reishi in the air or eat the sand to surviv-...hmm?" he said looking behind him in the air as he saw a twinkle in the sky.

"Somethin's comin'," continued Abdul turning fully around.

Chad stood up at this. "It's Inoue!"

As fast as it went up earlier, Santen Kesshun now came down multiple times faster. Since it was still enlarged, it looked like a giant triangular meteorite. Instantly it crashed in a brilliant explosion about twenty meters away.

"Inoue and her dramatic entrances," stated Chad as he braced himself against all the waves of sand that were thrown up. This might have beaten the time she revealed herself on the bridge for the 'most overly dramatic entrance award'. He thought his hair was going to take a while to even back out after Tsubaki's little haircut during that time, but he realized the girl's healing after their battle with the hollows had restored even that.

As the dust cleared, a golden glow with a figure on top emerged, which turned out to be Orihime. She emerged out of the remaining dust with a smaller Santen Kesshun and wearing different clothes. A softball raglan t-shirt with ½ length navy blue sleeves and a white torso with matching blue shorts that went down to her knees. It was the same outfit she wore when playing base-cer(the crazy fusion of baseball and soccer she created) with Tatsuki.* However, under the t-shirt and shorts were a black performance spandex-like material undershirt that extended to her wrists, and long black compression shorts barely extending past the length of her blue shorts respectively.

As she went over to Abdul and Chad, she saw the serious expressions on their faces..well mask for Abdul. They were staring holes through her which caused her to nervously sweat.

"Um...what's wrong you guys?" she began before looking back at her 'landing spot' seeing it was a triangular crater and then looking back in slow motion at her two 'teammates' who she finally realized were completely covered in sand.

"Ah! Sorry, but I had to find some way to air-dry these clothes so that's why I came down so fast," she began, waving her hands as she spoke, before starting to scratch the back of her head as if amused.

"Hehe, actually, I also was kind of going so fast that I couldn't stop in time, so I ended up crashing, hahaha," she explained while laughing, causing Abdul to spit out sand, and Chad to choke on some.

"What the-? That's the kind of things you keep to yourself! With your weird personality, you could've passed it off as you trying to make some stupid cool entrance," complained a sweatdropping Abdul.

Chad agreed with a grunt as he got the sand off of him. Orihime continued laughing for a while before deactivating Santen Kesshun, and returning the three Rikka to hairpin forms. She stepped in front of Abdul with a more serious expression.

"Sorry for the 'interruption' earlier," she said referencing the Rikka's hijacking of her conversation with Abdul, "But what do you think of my idea?"

_"What ide-Oh the shinigami thing? Hmm. That just reminds me, these humans are...well they're obviously not normal for starters. Not because of their powers, but their knowledge. Besides knowing about shinigami, they seem familiar with hollows as if their capture wasn't their first encounter with them. Then again, any human with spiritual powers would be on radar of the shinigami, and would obviously attract hollows. I guess it makes sense," _thought Abdul.

"Well it's not like there's much going on up here, and it looks like you just have all the plans to keep us occupied don't you. Fine, then. Let's go find your shinigami. Besides, this is just between the three of us, but it didn't matter what your idea was. We were still going back down there even if I had to drag you both against your wills. This plan of yours just happens to work out for me.

At this Chad raised his right eyebrow.

"Or have you two forgotten, I need to have a little 'chat' with these '**Celvia and Zoréno**' people. I know they're still down there and not going anywhere any time soon, so my little 'chat' can wait for your little side-quest rescue mission. It's funny though. I've never really eaten a shinigami. I hope they're a good figh-"

"What! You can't eat them Tarragó-san!"

_"Again with the -san," _thought Abdul with his eyes closed before they burst open. "Wait! What? I _can't _eat them? What am I on a diet? ! I can eat hollows, but not shinigami? What are they too fattening or something? What's with the double-standard?" demanded Abdul looking down at the much smaller human girl.

"The warden was different. He tried to kill us and when you gave him a warning, he still attacked, so he had it coming."

_"What's with that mindset? Why did she have my kill justified in her head? Didn't I tell her if she couldn't handle carnage every moment of her lif-It's like I thought, she's too soft. She's lucky I found her. She says how she won't let this place turn her into a 'bloodthirsty monster' which apparently is 'something that kills innocent souls, be it human or hollow' by her definition. That's dumb. No soul is 'innocent'. Of course shinigami use the 'cleansing souls' BS as a way to 'redeem' hollows to their 'cleansed' thus 'innocent' state. That's not what I meant though. I'm saying that across the board, no soul of any type is objectively innocent. I'll have to make her understand that and get over her sentimentality, and then we'll see what she can really do."__  
><em>

"Fine then, whatever. I won't eat them since they're probably weak with none of the info you want if they got captured by these nobodies," finished Abdul snapping out of his thoughts.

"Eh? Didn't we _all _get captured?" asked Orihime.

"Shut up! And how are we even supposed to find this shinigami anyway?"

"I've got an idea," said Chad as he walked past the Rikka wielder and the adjuchas.

"What are you-,"

"You didn't hear what the warden said? He said of all the people he expected to possibly cause trouble, there was you and the shinigami. And that means," said Chad materializing his arm, "That the shinigami is back where we just left," he finished and punched the still sinking said where Abdul's cero has pierced through with his own energy blast, opening it back up.

Abdul however was slightly livid. Just slightly though. "What! ? Figures we'd have to go back to that badly dimensioned funhouse-reject prison. Tch! Whatever, let's get this over with and you two better have your OWN backs because the last time I checked, tour guides aren't baby-sitters!" yelled Abdul thinking he made a clever joke when he really just unknowingly submitted to the dreaded tour guide role.

"Only if you watch yours," said Chad simply as he jumped into the hole, with Abdul and then Orihime following.

**El Centro**

**5:22 AM**

Celvia Lenoir considered herself 'the brains of the operation'. And so it was tough being the brains of the satellite branch 'Los Seis Pilares'. Running a base wasn't the easiest thing to do you know? It was always tough, but this week alone was a massive headache.

Both Segunda Cárcel, and Cuarta Cárcel(Spanish for: 'Fourth Gaol') somehow had inmate shipments scheduled later this morning at the same time! And Segunda Cárcel's shipments were going to _headquarters_ of all places!. How did _that_ get arranged? And that wasn't even the beginning. This morning marked the _third _high-profile catch that week, and this particular one being the fruit of their first 'raid' of the living world as a base after all. The mission was a disaster for the assigned squad, #336 Los Tranquilizantes, but that just made the humans that caused said disaster that much more valuable a catch. But for them to take out an elite squad without so much as an injury or even a scratch?

Rumors of the strange events from Dispatch had somehow spread all over the base, reaching the connected joint-facilities of El Centro and La Basurinera of which she was in charge of. The latter facility being located under the former. Upon the rumors merely penetrating the borders of El Centro, it circulated among the plaza and the squad barracks before spreading to the two adjacent sparring grounds on each side of El Centro itself. This all happened actually while Zoréno's Gillian were still in transit to Segunda Cárcel to imprison the two negación'd humans. Gossip had such speed! The rumors probably even reached the four corners of the base being the four gaols themselves before Zoréno finally called a summoning and debriefed the other five adjuchas, her included, of the happenings. Why and more importantly, how he kept the summoning over two hours with his esoteric theatrics, she'll never know.

But as soon as the summoning ended, more strange happenings occurred in rapid succession. Seriously eerie vibes were coming from Segunda Cárcel, and it wasn't hollow or shinigami reiatsu. Had it even been spiritual pressure at all? It seriously unnerved her. Then she felt the reiatsu of the inmates abruptly spike.

_"Must be because Xodri left for the summoning and still isn't back yet to rein them in," _initially thought Celvia.

Then at once, all the inmate reiatsu took a sharp nosedive except it wasn't Xodri or anybody else who had subdued them. The eerie vibe had returned. The situation repeated itself again except this instance the noisy inmates were silenced by none other than everyone's favorite prisoner Abdul Tarragó(massive sarcasm). It wasn't out of the ordinary. He had done as much earlier in the week upon his arrival to silence the incessant chatter of the inmates. While it was the warden's job to do that job, Xodri had been amused by the imprisoned adjuchas's annoyance at the prisoners.

But yet Celvia couldn't put her finger on the eerie vibes she still felt coming from the strangely built gaol, before she felt Xodri finally arrive back there only for his reiatsu to spike as if in battle. She would've thought he was just 'playing around' with the prisoners like normal if it weren't for her sensing the supposed imprisoned, injured, and starving Abdul's reiatsu rise a tiny bit like before when he subdued the inmates, while Xodri's reiatsu was suddenly barely sensible as if he had lowered it. Then both adjuchas's spiritual pressures disappeared completely. They slipped though her grasp of senses among the hurricane of spiritual pressure constantly being emitted from the inmates and Xodri's Gillian soldiers.

Suddenly the eerie vibe from before had become clearly able to be interpreted by Celvia as spiritual pressure(s) in a great epiphany. That same pressure skyrocketed, but the hollow inmate's pressure seemed to for some reason skyrocket in return instead of being subdued by it like before. And soon the inmate's pressure along with the Gillian's, drowned out the weird spiritual pressure she has just been able to comprehend, even escaping the grasp of her pesquisa.

_"No! My mind's not playing tricks on me. I felt something weird, but the squads I sent for reconnaissance should return soon and explain what that crazy kid Xodri is up to this time," _reasoned Celvia sitting in a makeshift chair twiddling her fingers. Shadows covered her entire being so that her form was unable to be seen.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the droning buzz of multiple sonído.

"My lady! Squad #223 reporting from duty, Soledad Narvola speaking!" spoke a soft-voiced female hollow in the middle of two others. All of them were on their knees, supported by their fists or whatever appendages they had on the ground.

"Mission report?"

"Mission was a success ma'm..unfortunately! Segunda Cárcel is in utter chaos! The inmates have escaped and are rioting! We were chased out of the gaol itself by them an-uohm!" she squeeked meekly as anvils of spiritual pressure slammed onto her back. It took all her will power to keep herself supported on her knees.

"Enough," began Celvia darkly. "Your mission specs clearly said to 'report on Warden Xodri Halconero's doings'. Your stories of personal hardships can come afterwards. Now please report if you may. Where is Warden Xodri during all this 'utter chaos' as you describe it?" she finished calmly, yet ominously.

Soledad figured she better get right to the point. "I was trying to tell you ma'am! Our unified pesquisa didn't pick up his...well existence," she finished barely audible out of fear of repercussions.

The adjuchas's eyes nearly widened out their sockets at this. "What are you saying?" she demanded/accused in the form of a question.

"W-with so many of them in one spot and nobody controlling them, Warden Xodri's gillian army has gone ballistic in some kind of cannibalistic fury! Normally an adjuchas's mere presence stops their Gillian from well...acting up, but like I said, even with our unified pesquisa with all of the other squads that were present, we couldn't pick up any reiatsu trail of him leaving his gaol's premises, meaning he didn't just _leave_. His reiatsu disappeared inside the gaol and it's now untraceable. And the behavior of his Gillian points towards a lack of his presence," finished Soledad ending explanation out of breath as the spiritual pressure was taken off of her and her teammates. They collapsed in exasperation.

_Was it said previously that this week was a 'headache'? No. This week had officially evolved into a migraine._

"Vana. Maribel," called Celvia standing up and trying to stay composed. On cue, two Gillian to the left and right of the area seemingly diffused out of the darkness they had previously blended in with perfectly due to their black cloaks. They meandered over where their master was. Each Gillian had unique masks instead of generic ones indicating sentience.

"Yes, my lady," inquired the one called Vana with a high octave yet even voice as if she were genuinely curious. Still wrapped up in shadows, Celvia gave her orders with military efficiency.

"Vana, report to the squad barracks and mobilize all off-duty and present elite squads at once to prepare to re-capture the escaped inmates. It's obviously impossible for them to escape back into the Menos Forest, but I don't want them running around the base or finding shallow areas in the forest canopy to blast up towards the desert. After mobilizing the elites as the vanguard, due to the short amount of time we have you will send them off immediately and then mobilize the rest of _all _squads present no matter their ranking, but leave the lowest tiers on standby," finished Celvia, and Vana was obediently gone in a buzz of sonído.

"Meanwhile, Maribel I have a very special job for you. We need another of the adjuchas to subdue Warden Xodri's Gillian and finally get to the bottom of this and since I can't leave here at this volatile time...I want you to instead inform...," trailed Celvia with much thought, "**Lía**," she stated, closing her eyes to calm her now literal migraine. Because of this she was unable to see the extreme widening of Maribel's eyes before the towering uniquely-masked Gillian too buzzed away with sonído.

**At the same time**

**5:22 AM**

Orihime, Chad, and Abdul, after doing the equivalent of tree branch acrobatics, finally landed on the ground.

"Hey! That's the huge tree where the prison is under!" shouted Orihime looking at the huge carved out entrance at the quartz tree's base.

"Alright, but this is a quick 'in and out' deal got it! ?" yelled Abdul over all the noise.

What 'noise' you ask? Of course what Orihime didn't care to mention was that in between the entrance and where the trio currently stood happened to be thousands of hollows eating each other and Gillian hands clawing their way out of the ground from the underground prison like demons sticking their hands out of a chasm from Hell. Ceros were actually _erupting _from the ground. It all looked like something straight out of the live action version of 'Night on Bald Mountain' that never was...until right then of course.

But Orihime didn't mention it because she wasn't concerned of course. Combined, the trio easily bulldozed through the hollows in the way, reached the goal entrance and did a combined blast. With Chad's energy blast, Orihime with Koten Zanshun, and Abdul's silver cero, it was almost like the dual attacks Orihime and Chad used on Aloban earlier that morning except now it was a tri-attack. Basically they 'declogged' the entrance of unnecessary hollows. They then ran inside the base of the giant quartz tree and saw the path was narrow, but they came to a steep drop that widened greatly the more they descended before at last landing on a large arena sized triangular platform.

On all three sides of the triangular platform, one could see the further descent into three different subdivisions of the familiar oddly shaped prison labyrinth.

"Wait a second! There's actually lights on!" shouted Abdul at seeing light coming from all three entrances of the labyrinth.

"There were lights in this place the entire time? !" asked an incredulous Orihime remembering how pitch dark it was before. They were truly seeing the gaol for the first time.

"That just means somebody's come here and turned them on trying to figure out what's going on. Judging from how far the prison riot has gone unchecked, they either were here and got ran out or still are here somewhere," commented Chad observing the hollows rushing up towards the exit they had just descended from.

"Then we've got to do this as fast as possible before they really gather and mobilize their forces and crack down here. More hollows will be coming to sort this out once and for all. I don't plan on being trapped in here when that narrow entrance gets clogged up again," commented Abdul with a tinge of annoyance.

Orihime was already on top of it as she summoned her Rikka.

"Alright everyone. There are three areas! Split up and search each section! Two to a section! And Tsubaki, for every cell you come across with no shinigami, I want you to cut it open and release the hollows inside like you did when we escaped here. Everyone else, use the same speed you use for re-summoning, but use it to search faster instead. I've been wondering if you're able to do that. You can right? And if any of you find any sign of shinigami reiatsu or any hint of where they could be, then re-summon yourselves back to me. Oh, and watch out for hollows! They're everywhere!"

It was true. Even though the three of them apparently somehow had escaped from merely one of these sub divisions in the pitch dark, there were hollows coming from all three. Had the rioting mindless Gillian made things _this_ worse?

"As for 'using the re-summoning speed to search' idea, we'll try it out to see if we can even do it even though I don't see how, but didn't I tell you before that hollows can't find us appetizing?" asked a smiling Shun'ō.

"Yeah, just try telling that to some of the borderline anorexic and otherwise starving hollows in here," muttered Abdul under his breath. Despite that, Orihime still overheard.

"Just be careful and go!" she shouted, before the Rikka flew up and split up into three groups a bright burst of light.

"Inoue, what about you?" asked a concerned Chad.

"Don't worry about me Sado-kun. I'm not completely helpless even without them. Splitting them up is the quickest way," she said warmly.

"Now let's go!" she shouted, charging towards the subdivision off of the base side of the triangular platform. Hinagiku and Lily were already inside this one and were searching. The other Rikka had gone into the subdivisions off the other two of the triangular platform's leg sides. Chad and Abdul however, went after Orihime. Together, they would hit any possible missed spots by Hingakiu and Lily, along with providing six extra sets of eyes and more reiatsu sensing.

The descent into the labyrinth subsection was endless, and made Abdul remember his endless ascent earlier in escaping the gaol with Orihime and Chad the first time. Now actually _seeing _the endless rows of destroyed cells on his way down in bright light, he saw these labyrinths weren't even close to being Daedalus-level in complexity. They were just an assortment of a plethora of what Chad had called 'hallways' or 'passageways' when he first came out of his cell with Orihime. Eventually, they landed in one of the 'passageways' similar to the one they had fought Xodri in. Hollows were everywhere. This was going to be a pain.

They all raised their reiatsu to sort of scare off or immobilize all the still weakened, injured, and starving hollows in the way as they ran down the passageway that was stadium-sized in width. The now familiar uneven, choppy ground still kept tripping them up, and all of the disproportionate cells had their glass barriers smashed and said prisoners bashing each other's brains...or masks out in a battle royale right above their heads. Others were frantically conniving for ways to escape, and some just sat there in their busted open cells, staring at it all.

_"These people are way too noisy. Tch. It sucks. And if I just subdue them all with my reiatsu, then it'll clear the path for those idiots to send in their reinforcements. I can beat any of their little squads, but I don't want to deal with small fry! I only want to fight two people! Everyone else'll be in the way. So I might as well play along with this for now. This shinigami better be a good fight themselves!" _thought Abdul who sonído'd high above of Orihime and Chad, scanning all the cells with pesquisa.

"Looks like he's got the cells up there, so we've got the bottoms-" began Orihime before a mass of hollows seemingly surrounded them in a highly coordinated flash mob sequence.

After forming a perfect circle, one stood out from the rest. "Well what do we have here? What's a little girl and boy doing lost in a dangerous place like this?" asked the apparent leader of the mob.

Chad wasn't fazed at all. Personally, he'd seen scarier mobs of delinquents trying to beat him up back in Mexico and Japan, so he was about to wipe them all out as he charged up his arm.

"No Sado-kun. Let me handle this. Stand against my back," said Orihime rising up both arms towards each side of the mob with her hands in fists before sticking out her pointer and index fingers together on both hands. She planned to show Chad how she wasn't helpless without her Rikka since he had questioned it previously.

"'Handle this'? How? By pointing at us hard with your fingers? Yeah right!. Everyone get the-!" he started before he felt like the bones of his skeleton were grinding against each other as his arms were violently dislocated and twisted behind his back. The same happened to the entire mob.

"You all weren't smart in choosing to crowd around each other like that," she said as her face darkened and her brown eyes twinkled golden for just a flash.

**"Blood that's bound and wrapped! Rigid, cleft structure! Atrophic sinews, arrested flesh, imprisoned spirit!" **shouted Orihime wrapping up the Kōjutsu Eishō (delayed incantation). The more she spoke the more the hollows seemed to be twisting in pain into a predetermined contained position, and the more that were under her spell.

"**Bakudo #1: Sai**!" she finished as they weren't even able to stand up with their forcefully dislocated, twisted limbs.

"Let's go Sado-kun!" she shouted, simply stepping over them fallen hollows much to their complaint.

_"Taking out like, two-hundred something hollows without even touching them. Even though they were weak to begin with and then further weakened from getting captured and starving, that was pretty cool. But still, when did she learn all this kidō?" _thought Chad. For about eleven or so minutes, the two of them searched cells, took down hollows in similar scenarios, but with Orihime using Eishōhaki(incantation abandonment) instead of Kōjutsu Eishō(delayed incantation), but mostly it was Chad firing his energy blasts causing the hollows to flee. Then, something novel happened.

"Sado-kun...I-I'm not sure, but I think I feel…or I've _been_ feeling shinigami reiatsu," commented Orihime.

"What? Where?" asked Chad, looking around trying to sense like a dog sniffing scents.

"I'm not sure. It's like one of those things that you've noticed in the back of your head for a while, but never really make the connection until later. B-but now, I'm sure! I'm sure I feel it!"

Right then, a hasty trail of yellow light zigzagged through masses of hollows, before arriving in front of Orihime in a re-summoning burst.

"Baigon!" said Orihime in surprise. He looked at her with heavy eyes, and looked exhausted.

"Orihime!," he panted,"It's Ayame! She thinks she's found something. Tsubaki is already heading over there!"

"Well, then you're just going to have to take me there right now," stated Abdul as if on cue, landing behind Orihime and Chad. Up in the high reaches of the rows of cells, his sensitive ears that he had specially tuned towards the humans had perked up the moment Orihime made her declaration that she'd sensed shinigami reiastsu. But seeing one of her creatures re-summon in the way she told them to if they had found the shinigami all but confirmed it.

Baigon however wasn't budging.

"It's alright Baigon! Go ahead with him! He's much faster than Sado-kun and I, and he carrying us would just slow him down,"

_"Oh, so he only listens to the girl huh? Not surprised, but it figures. And I can carry you both just fine, thank you very much. I never met a female who'd knowingly call themselves fat. Or is she just calling me weak? Either way, shinigami, here we come," _mentally monlogued Abdul before speaking.

"Alright, you heard the girl! Let's go!" commanded Abdul, as Baigon bursted away in a feat of speed and agility, while Abdul followed with sonído.

The Rikka was going at a pretty intense speed. Nothing Abdul couldn't outpace easily, but this was his guide after all. Maybe if they used that 're-summoning speed' the girl talked about earlier, they would be a challenge for him to catch up with. The both of them were going back they way they came. Back up to the triangular platform.

"Wait a second? Did you say 'Ayame' was there? Sounds like a girl,"

"And what of it?" questioned Baigon. He wasn't much of a conversation holder.

"Then that's the one with the red wings with golden triangles on them right?" guessed Abdul leapfrogging over a hollow. He sucked at describing the appearances of people. And all the Rikka just looked bizarre to him. Their 'wings' folded up when they weren't flying or doing some type of ability and almost looked like leg-appendages/apparatuses on some of them. Yet he was sure there were only two "female" Rikka, and could've sworn one of them helped form the triangular shield, while the other one had helped heal his arm earlier with the top-knotted one.

"Yes it is," responded Baigon as they made their way back up to the ascent to the arena sized platform.

"Heh! Good, because the other one you said was heading there was 'Tsubaki'. If that's the case then we can speed things up a little. I can do a pesquisa and home-in on their presences," he said closing his eyes and probing all the little bubble-like reiatsus mentally while still following a skeptical Baigon.

"You can do that in all this distracting reiatsu?"

"Of course. I have top-notch concentration you know. And it's easy for me to ignore annoying people; these hollows in particular. And besides the blonde top-knotted one, those two are the ones I'm most familiar with since the black haired girl with the red wings helped restore my arm, and that other one with the stupid looking bandana-scarf hybrid thing doesn't know when to freakin' shut-up, so his presence is impossible not to find!" explained Abdul as the two continued on their path towards the platform past the legions of hollows and Gillian.

"Don't compare me to the other hollows or adjuchas's here. My pesquisa's way better! I'll just home-in on them, then you can go back to the girl! She'll then call your other top-knotted friend, along with those two actually already in this sub-division who help form the shield-barrier thing with you so she and the boy can catch up by riding on it. See? I've got it all planned out," he finished before his eyes slammed open.

"Gottem'!" he shouted going ahead of Baigon with sonído.

Baigon re-summoned to Orihime where Hinagiku and Lily were already waiting. As Abdul said, those two had already been in this section to begin with, and Orihime must've re-summoned them. Baigon's partner had been Shun'ō, who was on the way to Ayame and Tsubaki alone. Forming, Santen Kesshun horizontally, Orihime merged her's and Chad's feet into the shield and flew off to their destination.

Abdul arrived at the ascent to the triangular platform and did the familiar ricocheting from wall to wall that he did to escape the gaol the first time, except he now understood the context in which he'd been doing it with the lights now on.

Aerially somersaulting onto the platform, he went into one of the sub-division entrances off of the left leg-side of the platform. After landing in one of the 'passageways' he had aimed to land in, he rushed to the end of it, taking bites out of any hollow that got in his way. He turned a one-way corner, went down a short path and saw it. It was like the entrance to a giant cave, with to his surprise, actual _proportionate _steps leading up to it as if it were some grand hall. A grave contrast to the rest of what of what he'd called a 'funhouse-reject prison'.

The entrance above was blocked off by the same familiar glass pane-like barrier. This specific cell was clearly isolated and in a hard to reach area than the rest as if it was special. There were extremely weak torches on each side of the narrow hallway leading up to the entrance. In front of the glass pane barrier were Ayame and Tsubaki. The area reeked of a Shinigami's scent.

"So _this_ is where the hotshot shinigami is? What makes them so special that they get not only a overly suspenseful entrance, but actual **spiraling **steps up to their cell! ? I was getting on the two humans for acting like they did so earlier, but even hollows treat shinigami better than they treat each other. What the hell? I mean, I would've thought this would've be that jailor or warden whatever kid that I ate's place, but all this actually for one prisoner," griped Abdul aloud while walking up the winding steps to the glass pane, and stopped in between Tsubaki and Ayame.

"Hmm? What are you two floating around for? Hey nervous pixie looking thing, get frown-face over here to slash the glass open! We don't have all morning," said Abdul lazily with his arms crossed.

Ayame was kind of miffed at that. He has nicknames for them? She was scared to see what he decided to call Hinagiku or Lily.

"Heh. I'm hearing a 'please' or we're waiting til' the women gets here," replied a smug Tsubaki with his eyes closed. Clearly he was enjoying his power over the situation.

_"Where's the 'don't talk to Ayame that way!' Tsubaki?" _thought a jaded Ayame inside her over-hood.

"WHAT? ! HA! Waiting for her and the world's first flying triangle-mobile™? That thing can't catch up to my sonído. It'll be thirty minutes before she gets here. Quit messing around, you know she wants to get out of here as fast as possible! We can just meet up with her," he reasoned to Tsubaki and Ayame who looked still looked disillusioned with his words. At that Abdul calmed down and used his 'persuasive voice'(yes he has one of those). "Listen, they can already hear us from inside there so we're not exactly sneaking up on them."

"Well if they couldn't hear us before, they definitely can now with your whining. You're like a little girl. Tch! Fine, whatever. You just better pray that the woman never turns me on you," threatened Tsubaki as he began glowing with energy.

"Trust me when I say I look forward to the day," responded a now pleased Abdul as Tsubaki Koten Zanshun'ed the barrier and it shattered.

The "glass" fell as the three apparent rescuers stared into the familiar darkness of a cell.

"Alright Shinigami! We know you're in there. Come on out or I'll just assume there's nothing there and blast the cell to smithereens for kicks," commanded Abdul to both the literal and mental facepalming of Tsubaki and the trademark hood retreating of Ayame.

__"Tarragó-san..."_ thought the female Rikka with unreadable emotion_.  
>"Is this what a rescuer should be saying?" <em>thought the male offense–purposed Rikka._

After a long pause, they heard quaint footsteps in the darkness; not really heading in any direction.

"Oh, so there _is _someone in there," began Abdul with knowing smugness. "All you had to do was answer, but you're pretty smart to stop hiding in the dark shadows because if you hadn't I was about to 'light up' the entire cell if you know what I mea-"

**"Be quiet," **rang out a deep, stoic condescending voice silencing the adjuchas and the thoughts of the Rikka. "You talk entirely too much…and let's get two things straight," continued the voice in the darkness, as the slow and now steady suspenseful approach of their footsteps could be heard.

"Your vacant threats didn't influence my decision to come out. I'm doing so of my own will. You could have fired your best attack, but with your level of power, it wouldn't have even touched me," continued the voice over the echoes of it's footsteps. "Secondly, I refused to answer before because calling someone especially like me, 'shinigami', is calling me out of name," he concluded as a gazelle skull mask peaked out from behind the curtain of darkness.

"It's Kanō. Ashido Kanō."

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><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**

**Chapter Started: Feb 12, 2012 9:55 PM est.  
>Chapter Finished: March 18, 2012 7:39 PM est.<br>Revisions: July 3, 2012 11:35 AM est.; April 12, 2013 11:40 PM pst. (brief edit)**

***Base-cer: **Bleach chapter 26, episode 15. The outfit Orihime has changed into before her entrance this chapter is a combination of the outfits she wore in both the manga and the anime for the 'base-cer' scene since the anime decided to make her wear something different than the manga. She had those clothes in her drawstring bag if you remember from last chapter.

**General:** The opening scene with Chad making ripples in the sand. It's very important. It was in the manga and the anime I believe.  
>So this so-called shinigami whose head(and not the rest of their body) covered by a hollow's mask, emerges from darkness of the cell and calls himself Ashido Kanō. The same name of the shinigami from the Menos Forest filler episodes in the anime. Is he truly who he says he is? If so, then what does it all mean?<br>This section's name "Hunting Gazelle" was a reference to "Ashido's" mask.  
>I'm personally like the incantation I came up with for 'Bakudo #1: Sai'. Shiro Ana's incantation comes in 2nd place to that now. Shō's incantation comes in last. I'm working on some new ones though...stay tuned for that.<p>

**Key Terms part 2:**

Los Seis Pilares: It means 'The Six Pillars' in Spanish, but it's a pretty symbolic name that I'll explain in later chapters. It is the name of the satellite base in which the action is taking place in this 'Satellite' mini-arc. Now you finally know the mini-arc's namesake. The base's function appears to center around the workings of Dispatch and it's 'missions', along with the gaols and their 'shipments' to headquarters and _other places_(as Celvia hinted to). As Celvia stated this chapter in her inner narration, there are four gaols each at one of the base's corners. Celvia also stated matter of factly that there is no way to escape the base through it's perimeter. Let's find out why in future chapters. A full visual aid along with further general details of the base is coming in chapter fourteen.

El Centro: Part 2-An update on El Centro. It is of course literally and figuratively the center of the base, and the 'muscle' of it. All squads dwell here within the barracks or wherever they feel like resting during downtime when not on missions. It is almost like a town square. The squads are numbered. All squads numbered 400 and below are 'elite squads'. All numbers after 400 are just the order of the squad's creation. Squads can contain 3-6 people. The number of people on each squad is based on the hollow's unique abilities and other variables. Depending on the mission, squads can also be compounded and/or combined with other squads, or have individual members picked to tag along with different squads. The 'staff' within El Centro are Celvia's sentient Gillian and they are the ones who issue the **'mission specs**'(a term mentioned by Squad #336 all the way back in chapter 8, and again brought up by Celvia in this chapter) in coordination with Dispatch. The squads receive their missions and then report to Dispatch. (continued in Key Terms part 3)

División de Envío(A.K.A. Dispatch): Part 2-An update on Dispatch. Located north of El Centro, this place is always busy and while El Centro is the 'muscle', this place is the 'brains' of the base. It's sort like an eternally fast-paced version of the DMV(one can dream XD).  
>'Dispatch', being the "mission control" of the base, receives ranges of coordinates from headquarters(as explained by Calibol in chapter nine) for all the missions, and then in cooperation with El Centro uses a proven selection process to tap certain squads for certain missions. Of course there are general missions that any squad can perform, and then there are the specialty or higher level missions requiring certain abilities. The selection process most commonly is a "randomly picked squad matched up to a randomly picked general mission," type of situation. But the process can also when dealing with those specialty or higher level missions, take into account the ranking and or prior merit and accomplishments of a squad.<p>

But a squad's rank/merit can also be looked at for the randomly picked general mission as well. This is done to make sure for just one example, that elites are filtered out and don't get sent and thus wasted on randomly picked missions that happen to be low-tier. Furthermore, entirely customized "one-timer" squads can be created for only a specific mission by having individuals who have the favored abilities to carry out that specific mission handpicked from other squads and put all together on a team to fulfill the unique objective of the mission. After the mission they would return to their default normal squads. But these "special squads" once initially formed receive a number, such as "Specialty Squad #134" so that if needed again they can be called upon and reassembled.

Regardless of all of that, after whatever selection process is complete, the then mobilized squads report to Dispatch for 'dispatching' to their mission locations. They are directed to a loading station(seen in chapter nine) by sentient Gillian where another sentient gillian worker who runs the station and acts as 'monitor' for the mission(like Calibol or Dámian), has their mindless gillian subordinates create a kūmon at the then finalized coordinates which at that point had been pinpointed from the range of coordinates initially sent from headquarters. We saw a lot of these Dispatch workers in chapter nine's beginning.(continued in Key Terms part 3)

Cuarta Cárcel: This location was mentioned by Celvia. It is the sister gaol of Segunda Cárcel. Both gaols make up two corners that frame the right side of the base. Besides their common proximity, they are called 'sister gaols' also because both have comically eccentric and questionable architecture. Abdul and Chad have questioned the sanity of the architecture of Segunda Cárcel numerous times. Cuarta Cárcel's architecture is a mystery as of now in the story. An interesting fun fact is that the architecture of all four of the gaols seem to be influenced by their respective wardens. What does this say about Xodri? Being a child, his gaol looks like it was designed by one with it's disproportional rows and columns, warped cell dimensions, and uneven wavy floors. As Abdul called it, a "fun-house", which references the disproportionate reflections in fun-house mirrors.(more info on gaols in future installments). Judging by Celvia's words, the shipment going out from Cuarta Cárcel is going some place other than 'headquarters'. Interesting.**  
><strong>**  
><strong>

**Mentioned in chapter OCs:**

Squad #223 with Soledad Narvola: Ahem. So, remember Squad #336? Meet Squad #223. These guys-or should I say gals, are elites. An all female team, they were sent along with other high tier elite squads and specialty squads to do reconnaissance at Segunda Cárcel about the seeming anarchic spiritual pressure coming from there. After turning on the lights in the gaol that Xodri for some reason liked to keep off, they along with all the other squads were run out of the gaol by the veracity of the prison riot after failing to locate Warden Xodri Halconero's existence, even with their 'unified pesquisa'. Squad #223 along with twenty-two squads(including elite and specialty squads) managed to escape the rioting prisoners and rogue Gillian. After getting run out of the gaol, the riot erupted to outside the gaol's entrance and Chad, Abdul, and Orihime managed land right in the middle of it all when returning from the desert this chapter.

Vana&Maribel: While Xodri only kept around mindless Gillian as his 'soldiers', Zoréno and Celvia have actual sentient Gillian staff and workers alongside mindless Gillian. They run the joint-facilities of El Centro and La Basurinera. Vana and Maribel are two of Celvia's strongest and highest ranking sentient Gillian.

Lía: Celvia in apparent desperation, has requested Maribel to go alert a mysterious entity simply named Lía to handle things at Segunda Cárcel. And Maribel seemed pretty scared to carry out said task.

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><p><strong>Any questions about any of the text above, leave them in a review.<br>Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.**


	12. The Fledgling Alliance

Today is August 20th, 2012 as of publishing this chapter! That makes it the one-year anniversary of this story's publishing. That's incredible! I thank my first reviewer, JustGrace-Lunacat13, who put me on the right track. And I truly thank my three most frequent reviewers, HMMaster(formerly HokkaidoMaster), EVA-Saiyajin, Codry. Especially HMMaster who is also my beta and has helped me improve my writing dramatically from when I first started publishing this story! Check out all of their awesome stories as well. And Scarlett Winds, I see you are new to the story. Well along with everyone else, stay tuned because the saga continues!

This chapter here is the first half of what was originally one chapter, just like 'The Lost Shinigami' series.

Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.

I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.

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><p>The Fledgling Alliance<br>-

Back to Back

**September 10th**

**5:39:38 AM. The being finally reveals himself. Ashido Kanō! A shinigami? But then why does he wear a mask?**

Abul was practically grinning at the words that just came out the masked shinigami named Ashido's mouth.

"Excuse me, what was that? I could've sworn some you just spoke some words that said if I blasted you FACE with a cero that your head wouldn't be removed from your shoulders.

"Hm. Depends on what you mean. 'Removing my head from my shoulders'. You make it sound like a beheading from a _blade_. If that's the case I'll just swat it away with the flat of my zanpkutō," remarked Ashido, stepping further out of the shadows to reveal his hand calmly resting on the hilt of his zanpkutō which sat in it's sheath.

"Now then," he continued. "What business do you have with me hollow, to make such an overly dramatic entrance? If I don't get a good enough answer I'll take advantage of your foolish decision to free me by breaking that barri-" he continued but getting cut off by the noise of whirring energy coalescing at Adul's mouth.

"Sorry! You lost me when you said you'd actually swat away my cero and with the flat of a twig sword at that! Let's test that theory!" he shouted making to fire his silver cero while Ashido grabbed his hilt to do just what he said he'd do.

Suddenly the energy dissipated. "Mmmhmmm! Mhmmmm!" were the muffled protests of the adjuchas. Tsubaki and Ayame had flown in and comically blocked Abdul's mouth much to the shock of Ashido.

_"What are those? Were they behind him all along? Could they be a part of this hollow?"_ he thought. It wasn't far-fetched to think that seeing as the hollow who fought Rukia and Chad had little 'minions'._  
><em>  
>"Both of you morons quit flirting and let's meet up with the others and leave!" That was Tsubaki of course.<p>

"Hmwaaa!" shouted Abdul regaining control of his mouth. "You're making orders now? Wait till your 'master' gets here to make decisions for _you_! Until then, _I'll _do what I want!"

"'Until then?'" questioned an innocent approaching voice from afar. All individuals present turned from the cell entrance back towards the orderly path leading up to it to see Orihime and Chad riding in on Santen Kesshun.

"As in once I get here, then I say what goes? I didn't know you considered me in charge Tarragó-san. You guys were waiting on me to arrive the whole time?" she asked landing and dispelling the shield under her and Chad. Shun'ō had apparently met up with the others on the way because now he and all three Santen Kesshun forming Rikka were present as Ayame and Tsubaki floated over to join them.

"'Thinking you're in charge?' 'Waiting on you?' As if-!" shouted Abdul before Tsubaki covered up his mouth with his back.

"This genius was trying to ruin the plan by fighting the shinigami!" shouted Tsubaki knocking the back of his fist on one of Abdul's teeth as if gesturing to him.

"What? Why would you do that?" complained a jaded Lily.

"Endangering the mission's integrity after all this time?" commented Hinagiku with an incredulous stoicity.

At this point Ashido was so sorely confused that he barely inched back into the darkness defensively while the others were turned and focused on each other. A large boy and a smaller girl? Humans? ! But they had extremely high reiatsu to be mere humans and even did some sort of technique. And more of these creatures too! Were they all completely separate from anybody else—and they can talk! No wait, those three new ones came from the barrier the girl dispelled and they seemed to share the reiatsu of the girl human as if they were all connected. Is this who the creature with the bandana had indicated they should meet up with? Then what of the boy?

"Pffft!" said Abdul nearly spitting Tsubaki out his general mouth area. "Like I said girl, don't flatter yourself. Nobody was waiting on you _or _the boy! You've forgotten that finding the shinigami is your little 'side-quest', so naturally for now you say what goes as far as what we all do. Think of me even helping out with this as thanks for getting me out my cell. I mean, I could've just waited up on the desert instead while you two busted out the shinigami by yourselves and it wouldn't have broken the deal between us three. You two knew how to get back here yourselves after all. But after this side-quest is through, we're starting the main adventure and doing what I want to do! If I'm the 'tour guide' then you're traveling with me, and I decide where we go! You should consider yourself lucky that both of our immediate plans just happened to put us on the path of dealing with these idiots that captured us. We've already been over this up on the desert. Refresh your memory!"

"As for you six! Enough with the patronizing," he said referring to the Rikka. The adjuchas still didn't feel right talking to them. He was still getting used to the fact that they were apparently completely sentient. Yet Lily and Hinagiku's early admonishing had irked him for other reasons which caused him to take it out on all the Rikka.

"Here's a bright idea. Why don't I just grab your precious weakling shinigami an-ack!" shouted Abdul swift jumping back and turning around to an drawn zanpakutō that had just been pricking his back.

"I'll repeat myself once more," stated the gazelle masked Ashido in his powerful yet low voice(not as low as Chad's voice though). "Who are you and what do you want from me?"

"Tch! Automatically pointing the weapon at the hollow, when all of us are in question," rubbing his back where the blade had pressed against soothingly.

"You can put down your sword. We're no threat to you," injected Chad. This entire time he'd been observing the shinigami while Orihime and Abdul carried on their conversation. Both he and the shinigami had been reduced to observers during the brief exchange.

" 'No threat'? Now I wouldn't go _that _far," responded Abdul in an amused tone. "But, yeah, typical shinigami attacking the hollow first to find out what's going on. Don't worry though, I'm still confused here myself seeing as my so called partners here haven't even so much as told me their names," stated Abdul with his arms crossed. Personally he was still crooning over the lack of receiving the answers Chad had promised back when the two humans had 'interrogated' him before breaking him out his cell. He was surprisingly a patient hollow, but wasn't afraid to drop a hint or two that his curiosity was getting the better of him.

Orihime had lost her composure. They hadn't even given him their names? ! "W-wow we totally forgot!"

Chad smirked faintly. "What do you mean 'we' Inoue? I just never answered a question that wasn't asked. Plus," continued Chad looking up to his left at Abdul, "I just assumed you heard Inoue and I call each other's name in conversation."

This cued Tsubaki to bring up an old line of his. "There's no time to chat. You don't need to know who we are or where we come from. And that goes for you too shinigami! Hurry up and get out the cell or we'll forcibly kidnap yo-" he said before being silenced by the familiar grip of Orihime's warm fleshy hand.

"But for what it's worth Sado-kun, Shinigami-san here actually did ask us who we were and just now, so did Tarragó-san," said Orihime positioning herself to better address both Abdul in front of her and Ashido who was still further up within the cell's barrier.

"I'm Orihime Inoue. And nice to meet you, shinigamai-san!" beamed Orihime.

"Yasutora Sado," chimed Chad with an indifferent expression.  
>Before Ashido could even question more inside his head, Abdul did a late echo behind the two humans.<p>

"Abdul Tarragó to you shinigami...oh and I'm obviously not in any way in league with or associated with these other hollows in case you were having some stupid thoughts otherwise," stated Abdul.

Meanwhile Ashido was still pointing out his sword, albeit hesitantly. _"I still don't get it. It seems like from what they've said to each other that they came just to break me out, but I still don't get what's going on at all and I don't feel any ill-will or killing intent from either of them. Even the hollow," _stated Ashido looking over Abdul. He had an imposing visage. Height-wise, the human boy only came up to the top of his hips.

He had a quite humanoid shape with a navy indigo body with silver stripes and no tail. His large frame included a distinct distinct V-taper upper-body, with his shoulders looking like enlarged balls in sockets, widening the V-shape even more. His forearms seemed enlarged in proportion to the rest of his arms. Topping this off, he had little holes lining his fingers and each side of his arms, legs and torso, and a few on his large shoulders, as if it were a pattern of tattoos. And not that the two are related in any way at all, but his mask seemed like a mixture between tribal and 'demonic' influences. Slowly Ashido closed his eyes in resignment.

"Ashido Kanō," stated Ashido giving his name once more while simultaneously sheathing his sword.

Directly after that sheathing sound echoed down the path leading to the cell, chaotic chorus of Gillian screams echoed even louder than they had been up to that point with discord throughout what seemed like the entire gaol. Gradually the screams eerily become more uniform and in order as if in unison.

Abdul turned his back to Asido at this, making to step past Chad to his right and Orihime who was in front of him. "Figures. They're finally subduing the Gillian. It's reinforcements led by an another Adjuchas. I recognize its pressure. It's the same from before!"

"So you recognize it too then?" echoed Asido shunpo'ing to Adbul's right, causing Orihime to double take at the sudden speed. Abdul was unfazed as if it was no big deal.

"Duh! It's one of the B words that jumped me and captured me while I was still injured!"

"Sounds like our stories are similar..._Adjuchas_," commented Ashido, re-drawing his zanpakutó while taking note of Abdul's menos evolutionary stage.

"Tch! Similar? We'll tell our life stories around a campfire later _Shinigami_," began Abdul putting as much emphasis on his latter word as Ashido had on his.

"Let's focus on busting back out of this place! That entrance at the top is going to get crowded quickly if we don't. I hope you can keep up with my sonido with your reiatsu obviously still recovering-Well at least I hope that's the case with your reiatsu because otherwise you're so weak that you'd get accidentally stepped on by a Gillian or something. This is me giving you benefit of the doubt here. Don't worry or even care about the two humans. They knew the stakes when they got involved. They don't need protection. The girl's slow motion flying triangle thing you saw before will catch up with us some time today," said Abdul with a grin in his voice as he prepared to take off, with Orihime yanking the Kesshun trio(even Baigon) out of the air before they could begin their protests at the adjuchas's remarks.

But rather than focusing on the safety of two out of place human beings as a concerned shinigami, it seemed Ashido was still caught up on certain earlier details that had emerged from Abdul's mouth as he prepared to take off as well.

"Know this adjuchas. A Shinigami's 'shunpo' is far superior to a flattering imitation." For a moment it somehow sounded like he was at least mildly smirking behind his own mask before both individuals vanished from sight in a buzz and flash respectively.

Meanwhile Chad and Orihime were left standing with fledgling sweat drops on themselves.

"Did they just...ditch us?" questioned Chad as if unsure. His hair behind his eyes hid his full expression.

"Oh great, so it turns out they're _both_ stupid. T-those clowns are actually having a _footrace _at a time like this! To think I was actually taking the shinigami seriously for a second there," facepalmed Lily before being summoned into Santen Kesshun while the healing duo and Tsubaki were put back into hairpin form.

"No time to complain you guys! We have to catch up! Another Adjuchas is here, and it feels way, way stronger than the one we beat earlier!"

**Meanwhile in the heat of a race**

"What's wrong shinigami? ! You look a little winded!"

Ashido was currently lagging behind Abdul in their race to the exit. He still had conflicting feelings over apparently partnering with a hollow, his natural enemy that he fought against for survival for ages, but he decided to go with the flow tentatively.

"I have nothing to prove by beating you at your own game born out your own inferiority complex. There is no competition between us."

Abdul deadpanned at this as he and Ashido nonchalantly rammed with their feet into the masks of a small collection of hollows coming towards them who never even saw it coming, completely stomping and bulldozing them over as part of their normal stride while speeding further up the path with their respective high speed movements.

"Gah! Loosen up will ya'! Quit making everything like the end of the world or something. Are all shinigami boring killjoys like you?"

"How would I know? I'm no longer capable of answering that. It's like I said when I first talked to you. Calling me 'shinigami' is calling me out of name," said Ashido as he sped past the adjuchas and banked around the corner that Abdul had originally turned to transverse the path to the shinigami's cell earlier.

_"What is this guy talking about-_Hey get back here!" protested Abdul interrupting his thoughts.

"Since when did you think I was going full speed adjuchas? Even now this is nothing," said Ashido speeding up the straightaway in lead position.

"Those're my lines!" shouted Abdul taking extra steps in his sonido to get alongside and pass the shinigami when instantly they were confronted by a uniformly sonido'd line of Gillian and hollows which quickly spread and surrounded them in a complete circle and simultaneously then evolved into a 360-degree dome of a horde of Gillian and hollows.

"What is this? ! They're working together?" exclaimed Abdul caught off guard by the efficient swiftness of the instantaneous battle arrangement. He hadn't been paying attention with being distracted with the shinigami.

_"!...Some kind of advanced Gillian formation? ! Not just Gillian, but hollows as well. And they all used sonído,.." _thought Ashido silently as he gripped his sword in front of him harder.

"All too easy," rang out a piercing female soprano voice among the uncharacteristically quiet Gillian and hollows.

"Show yourself...adjuchas!" shouted Abdul as if looking for re-affirmation as he searched the Gillian horde with his eyes. He wondered anxiously if this was one of the ones he was searching for, and he wasn't quite a fan of the suspense genre at all.

"Way ahead of you," said the voice from a newly sonido'd body crouching on one knee atop a mindless Gillian. Quickly looking up they barely got a glimpse of her as she sonido'd down in a quintuple-flip slamming down on the ground to face the two escaped prisoners.

The hollow looked like a fierce anthropomorphic bird of prey, no species in particular. About a few inches taller than Abdul, she was wingless, but had a lithe form, sporting acute brown feathers, talons on hands and legs, and a definitive ebony beak. The material that made the beak seemed to make up the rest of her mask as well for a unique look.

"What a surprise. So you two are the ones causing havoc. I guess our accommodations were too restrictive for your liking," she seemed to joke before her reiatsu darkened causing both males to become apprehensive. "Now then, I'll only ask this once. Where is Xodr-" she went on before being cut off by a seemingly ticked-off Abdul.

"Ya know, I really hate false accusations. 'Causing havoc'? All I did was kill the kid! It's the girl that caus-" he tried explaining before a burst of spiritual pressure hit him.

"What...what did you say? ! You LIAR! There's no way my little brother Xodri could've lost to a WEAKLING LIKE YOU!" The Gillian seemed to react to her anger as they started roaring in unison.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY? !" shouted Abdul putting his fingers in his ear holes, quoting and mocking the angry adjuchas in an equally loud voice much to the annoyance of Ashido who took the brunt of the decibel recoil. Slowly, Abdul took his fingers out his ears and spoke in a feigned remorseful-sarcastic voice, "I'm so sorry, but I couldn't hear your ear-drum shattering squawking over my stomach making those obnoxious digestion noises."

The avian adjuchas couldn't believe what she just heard and the implications of such and was at a loss for words before finally manufacturing an incredulous sentence of words. "Y-you think this is a joke! ?"

"Well," responded Abdul tactfully in a suddenly nonchalant voice which didn't bode well. "To be honest and specific bird-girl, I think _you're_ a joke. And if you think anyone's taking you serious right now then that's pretty comical too. Now step aside-" he began to say before he was cut off by sudden buzzing.

A trio of hollows had arrived on the scene behind the feathered adjuchas. "Warden Halconero! Squad #203 reports as ordered! The high priority adjuchas prisoner Abdul Tarragó is missing from his cell in passageway C as are-"

"H-hey!" shouted Abdul cutting off the speaker right as they stopped talking in realization of the scene before him. The speaker fearfully looked right at Abdul as if he had no choice not to do so after being addressed so firmly. But he did it hesitantly as if he was hoping Abdul had called one of his teamates instead.

"Yeah that's right, I'm talking to you—you with the mask, yeah the ugly one—there we go!" said Abdul as if that description somehow confirmed who he was addressing somehow, satisfied that he had fully gotten the hollow's attention.

"Alright, firstly, Abdul Tarragó is yours truly. There's no need for your late announcements! Now I advise you all leave if you don't want to be caught up in what's about to happen. That goes for _all of you_," he stated referring to the now mumbling hollow squads infused within the Gillian formation before turning to Ashido as if in deep thought.

"You know what? I actually feel better that they actually sent a squad to check on my cell. Almost makes up for them making your cell a freakin' castle eh shinigami? A slight pause was held as the expressionless gazelle mask on the shinigami's face refused to reveal the inner sanctum of his thoughts.

"Actually I'm thinking they did send a squad to my cell adjuchas. They're the ones we we ran over during our 'race' when you were trying not to let me catch up to you. Key word is 'trying'."

Abdul surprisingly ignored the quip at the end there. "Hm? Oh yeah I almost forgot we stepped over those doormats on the way here," he said before addressing the hollow trio. "Hey! You again—hollow with the awkwardly shaped mask! If you find three hollows back here with footprints embedded into their masks, they're probably mine. Just puttin' that out there," he drawled lazily.

_"What are these two going on about? They're not the least bit on guard, and yet at the same time it seems they're ready for anything," _analyzed the avian adjuchas as her golden eyes narrowed to slits.

Suddenly Abdul turned back to the bird adjuchas as if suddenly remembering something.

"Oh yeah, and like I was saying before you _rudely_ interrupted me, We didn't cause any of this 'havoc'. It was all the their doing, the girl's in particular," he finished. This caught her attention. It also caught the attention of Squad #203.

"The 'who's'?" asked the bird adjuchas dubiously.

"W-warden Halconero-sama!" came a voice of one of the squad 203 members, "It's like we were trying to tell you before the prisoner interrupted! The high priority adjuchas prisoner Abdul Tarragó is missing from his cell in passageway C as are the the two spiritual-medium humans adjacent to his cel-"

BOOM!

An explosion hit from behind Abdul and Ashido's position as a Gillian slowly began to fall down, it's left foot gone.

_"What the-" _she began in her thoughts trying to pesquisa out any foreign spiritual pressures.

"That's 'who'," said Abdul answering the avian adjuchas's previous question without turning around to look at what caused the explosion.

Before she could think any further a sharp object chipped the left side of her mask from behind, cutting into the skin beneath and ripping off a small corner as she dodged at the last millisecond to minimize damage.

"AAAAAAAHAAARGHHA!" she screamed out in a higher pitched voice of pain, clutching her mask with both hands in still on-going confusion as whatever cut her had disappeared from her senses. The hollow trio went white in the mask at this, not sure what to do in fear.

"Oooh, right on cue too. I think we're getting better at this coordinated fighting stuff even compared to when we fought against the brat don't you think so you two, he asked turning behind him.

As the Gillian completed it's fall, Chad walked out from the rising dust of the explosion with his arm armored while Orihime flew in aerially on Santen Kesshun with Shun'ō sitting in her hair, landing next to Ashido. They positioned themselves back to back with Addul and Ashido respectively, until all four had a view of a certain segment of the surrounding formation of Gillian and what were presumably hollow squads; reinforcements sent to quell the prison riots.

"Did you really think we were taking that long to get here? Don't underestimate Santen Kesshun's speed Tarragó-san," said Orihime in a playful warning voice. She hadn't forgotten his many nicknames for the shield.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," answered Abdul as something caught his eye. He looked up in dreaded annoyance as he saw what it was.

"And that's how it's done!" shouted none other than Tsubaki triumphantly flying back down to their level.

"Tch, how what's done? 'Missing'? You had all that time to aim and you couldn't even cut off her head. If you had, then we could've just left and I'd have a 'to-go' snack to boot, on top of the kid I already ate."

"I'd cut her head off and you'd have a 'to-go snack'? You think this is a neighborhood fast-food restaurant or something? Kill your own stupid food, what am I a chef?"

"And just what the hell is 'fast food' supposed to be? !"

"ENOUGH!" shouted the injured adjuchas.

As far as she'd known, she'd been nicked in the mask by who knows what and these who prisoners who somehow escaped were mocking her with their nonchalance. Why were the human and the shinigami awake? Hadn't they immediately been put under biostasis upon their capture as basic protocol calls for? It wasn't supposed to be reveresed until they got shipped to headquarters! What had happened for all of them to be seemingly teamed up as if they were in some bad role playing simulation*? Just look at them back to back. A hollow, shinigami, and two humans who had presumably defeated elite squad #336 Los Tranquilizantes without a even scratch, yet had somehow exhausted all their spiritual power before their accidental extraction from the human world. This was crazy! What was going on? She felt dizzy and disoriented from her mask wound. Bloody strands of her human hair were threatening to spill out. The blood made it impossible to tell what color the hair was.

And what was even worse was that they completely ignored her recent outburst of "ENOUGH", which basically told them to shut up, and weren't even paying her any mind and continuing to carry on with their chatter like a bunch of school children at a playground. And Xodri...was he really? Could he really be...At those thoughts her rage and spiritual pressure began exponentially growing in tandem.

But she managed to get the following out in a strained whispering voice. "Squad 203, 'Los Víboras Hiper' right? Report these happenings to El Centro and Celvia immediately." As her reiatsu continued to rise, the hollow squad fearfully followed her orders with hasty use of sonído.

Lily in the midst of conversation took notice of the pot threatening to boil over mid-sentence of whatever they had been talking about. "Hm? Oh wow what's this one's problem," she said as if just noticing the avian adjuchas.

"Eh? I'm not sure really. Uh... I think she was saying something earlier that the brat I ate was her brother or some crap like that. I dunno, her voice was really loud and annoying so I plugged up my ears and ignored her. What did she say his name was shinigami? S-sodri? Sodri righ-?"

"XODRI! HIS NAME _IS _XODRI!" shouted the female adjuchas.

"Hm! Yeah that's it! And we all fought on the desert when you all captured me. You introduced yourselves but I forgot all your names. Hey shinigami, I think you implied back when we broke you out that you fought these guys or something too. So what's this one's name?" he asked pointing at the subject of his curiosity like she was an inanimate object.

"Why would you expect me to remember the name of every unimportant hollow that comes along? I'm already poor at remembering faces, let alone masks. I was never told her name. You should ask her yourself adjuchas," stated a calm Ashido.

"Sheesh! You can't hold a conversation with this guy," complained Abdul, making to ask the question to the adjuchas himself before she herself answered with now forced confidence. You could tell how forced it was by how formal and dramatic she was sounding. A steep contrast with her normal speech.

"I am Lía Halconero! You dared to attack me and now have encored the wrath of this entire base of **Los Seis Pilares**! And as warde-!"

"Lía huh?" cut off Abdul impatiently, "What a simple name. I just want to correct you on something you said. It's not 'his name _is_ Xodri', it's 'his name _was Xodri_'. It's kinda sad. That you're beginning to sound JUST LIKE HIM!" shouted Abdul raising his reiatsu until it was vaguely beginning to become visible as sterling silver.

Lía visibly recoiled at this action, "THAT'S IT! FORGET SHIPPING! YOU'RE ALL OF YOU ARE DEAD!"

_"Offensive Gillian Technique(OGT) #1: 'Lluvia Sangrienta', (Spanish for: 'Bloody Rain')"_ she thought silently.  
>The Gillian in their three-sixty dome formation began charging ceros to attack the four individuals in the middle. Strangely, the hollows in the formation began to do so as well.<p>

_"Heh, not only did that near direct-quote make you sound even more like the brat, but you're even making the same mistake as he did! Relying on those toy soldiers!" _thought Abdul bracing himself for the familiar technique.

"Get ready for the cero's Inoue," warned Chad warily.

"_Heh. You people can't even see it coming._ _Defensive Gillian Technique # 6: Negación Cárcel (Negation Gaol)"_

At seeing up untill then idle Gillian respond silently to Lía's reiatsu at that instant, Ashido's eyes widened, and he shunpo'd above Chad, Abdul and Orihime who all barely had time to look up before he yelled something.

"Sentan Hakuja!(Thousand-Coil White Snake)!" Instantly white tassel-like bandages manifested and started spiraling at sonic speeds around the group in the shape of a dome, faster and faster.

Whatever he had been attempting to do seemed too slow as the cero's and the new foreign attacks all flew out the Gillian's mouths causing an explosive flash. As the smoke cleared all that was left was the large Negación-likebox that seemed to have been formed from the many foreign attacks that had flown out of some of the Gillian's mouths who weren't firing ceros. There was absolutely nothing in the box.

Lía was flabbergasted and inconsolable.

"W-where'd they go?" she barely whispered at first. She jerkishly turned towards the squads she had helped lead back into the gaol to crush to prison riots. "All of you open your pesquis-WHERE'D THEY GO? !" she now shouted before going into incoherent rambling mutters.

One of the hollows in the formation made to bravely step out of it away from their squad members. His voice was deep and powerful yet fearful. "Warden Halconero! We aren't picking anything up! They've completely vanished! There's too much reiatsu interferenc-"

"Search EVERYWHERE! DON'T REST UNTIL YOU FIND THEM _AND _MY BROTHER!"

"B-but they're gone!" came another adolescent girl voice.

Whether Lía took that to mean specifically that Xodri was gone or that the four prisoners were gone, or both, nobody knows, and nobody was able to even speculate.

Her head was pounding, everything was a shade of sepia. She coldn't believe what just happened. And it all happened so fast and surreal. Four of their most highest profile prisoners ever had escaped into thin air. Segunda Cárcel had been in chaos, and most importantly her little brother Xodri had been...

"no...No..NO! It can't end like this I won't I-! gGAARGH!" she shouted in an anguished rage and unconsciously began charging up a cero. At this every gillian in the entire goal including the ones outside her formation also began charging a cero. The only being in the gaol able to control Gillian could no longer control herself.

"Warden Lía has lost it!"

"Please control yourself Lía-sama!"

"Forget her, let's get out of here-!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" shouted Lía finishing charging her burgundy cero. The same color as Xodri's. They cry of a hollow sounded off as she fired. And as she fired, the Gillian fired and the entire massive gaol was engulfed in the color of blood.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**

**Chapter Started: ?  
>Chapter Finished being written on paper: Mar 11, 2012 7:38 PM est.<br>Typed and Revised: ?-Aug 20, 2012 3:30 PM est.**

*RPG reference ftw. It does seem like an RPG though doesn't it?

**General:** So the ominously mentioned last chapter "Lía" finally makes her appearance. If you missed it, she started to say she was a warden this chapter and got interrupted. But of which gaol?

Speaking of that, man, people in this chapter are so rude. They keep cutting each other off in the middle of talking.

New techniques used:

_-Defensive Gillian Technique # 6: Negación Cárcel (Negation Gaol) _and the unnamed "Gillian dome formation".

_-Sentan Hakuja:_ Literally means 'Thousand-Coil White Snake'. If you have any memory at all you will remember that both Kaname Tōsen and Gin Ichimaru used this before.

I feel like I made Ashido a Byakuya clone this chapter. Oh well. There's more chapters to come.

Since it's been a couple weeks since the last update, I want to take this time to do a little character and vocabulary review.

**Key Character Refresher**:

-Zoréno: First introduced in chapter nine. In charge of the "Dispatch Division". He is ape-like aesthetically, bipedal but can walk locomotively like a primate. He has a mesomorph upper body and endomorph lower body. Lastly he has a goldenrod hide and a mask shaped like an obtuse arrow-head with burgundy markings that accent the arrow. His surname will be revealed in the future.

-Celvia Lenoir: First mentioned in chapter nine, just introduced last chapter. Yes she is an adjuchas and is in charge of places called 'El Centro' and 'La Basurinera'. You may be wondering why her last name is French? I wondered this too and quickly came up with an answer. Kubo didn't solely use the Spanish language motif when naming hollows and arrancar. Just look at Zommari's last name. French! And that's just one example, but it's one of the only French ones I can find...oh wait there's Grimmjow's last name too!(at least I think it is)

**'Key Terms Parts 1&2' Refresher:  
>(see last chapter author's note for more details. This is just a refresher with a little additional points)<br>**

-Piramidión(Spanish for: 'Pyramidion'): A certain location mentioned by Calibol(one of the sentient Gillian seen in the beginning of chapter nine).

-Los Seis Pilares(Spanish for: 'The Six Pillars'): It's the name of the base these hollow operate, but it's also a symbolic name. A full visual aid/diagram along with further general details of the base is coming to a computer screen near you in chapter fourteen.

-División de Envío: (Spanish for: 'Dispatch Division') Colloquially called 'Dispatch'. You should be able to tell they are basically 'mission control' of this 'base'. Together with all his Gillian under his control, the adjuchas Zoréno is in charge of this area. Of all the Gillian he controls, the "Sentient Gillian" are like officers each with a station and some have their own "Mindless Gillian" subordinates who do the grunt work like creating kūmons and shooting the Negación beams.(This is taken from chapter 10's author note. See chapter 11's author note for more detail). A last further detail is that Dispatch is just north of 'El Centro'.

-El Centro: (Spanish for 'The Center'). It is the center of Los Seis Pilares where all squads dwell. The adjuchas Celvia Lenoir is in charge.

-La Basurinera: (Combined the Spanish words 'la basura'(the trash) and 'incinerador'(incinerator). This is the area Aloban's defeated team(see chapter eight) were placed as ordered by Zoréno(see chapter nine). It is also under the control of Celvia along with El Centro. The two facilities are adjoined as it is directly under El Centro deep underground; even deeper than Segunda Cárcel is where it is located

-Segunda Cárcel: (Spanish for: 'Second Gaol') A prison that houses captured targets. Orihime, Chad, and Abdul all escaped from this prison together in chapter nine after slaying the warden Xodri Halconero and basically inciting a prison riot. Last chapter, they went back and broke out Ashido Kanō before all mysteriously disappearing together in a flash this chapter.

-Cuarta Cárcel: This location was mentioned by Celvia last chapter and is the sister gaol of Segunda Cárcel. Both gaols make up two corners that frame the right side of the base. Besides their common proximity, they are called 'sister gaols' also because both have comically eccentric and questionable architecture. Abdul and Chad have questioned the sanity of the architecture of Segunda Cárcel numerous times. Cuarta Cárcel's architecture is a mystery as of now in the story. An interesting fun fact is that the architecture of all the gaols seem to be influenced by their respective wardens. What does this say about Xodri? Being a child, his gaol looks like it was designed by one with it's disproportional rows and columns, warped cell dimensions, and uneven wavy floors. As Abdul called it, a "fun-house", which references the disproportionate reflections in fun-house mirrors.(more info on gaols in 'Key terms part 3'). Judging by Celvia's words, the shipment going out from Cuarta Cárcel is going some place _other_ than 'headquarters'. Interesting.

-'Los Tranquilizantes' is Spanish for The Tranquilizers. It is the name of Aloban's squad that we saw Orihime and Chad fight in chapter eight and the name has relevance, which will again be explained later of course. Their squad number is #336.

Key Terms Part 3 is coming in a later chapter

**Mentioned in chapter for first time OCs:**

Squad #203: 'Los Víboras Hiper' (Spanish for: The Hyper Vipers): These guys were just plot devices. Ignore their very existence. You'll see how they were plot devices next chapter.  
>There's also the weakling unnamed squad that got ran over by Abdul and Ashido in their race. In other words, fodder characters. "You've gotta love 'em."<p>

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><p><strong>Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.<strong>


	13. Alma Secta

This chapter and last chapter were originally one. I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.****  
><strong>**

* * *

><p>Alma Secta<br>-

**September 10th**

**30 seconds earlier  
>5:47.50 AM. What has become of the quartet of escaped prisoners?<strong>

A eerily silent lifeless quartz tree wooded area was completely desolate as if nothing had ever existed there. Something looked off about one of the taller quartz trees up near one of it's higher branches before a flash of light came into existence revealing it to actually be a spiraling dome of what eventually could be made out as tassel-like bandages. Slowly they lost cohesion and went all different directions revealing them to be attached to the arms for a figure dressed in a ragged black kimono wearing a gazelle skull mask. Draped over the tattered kimono was a brown pelt to which more masks were attached. Among him were three other newly perplexed looking individuals; two humans, and a silver striped navy blue/indigo-ish adjuchas hollow.

"Eh?" questioned a feminine voice.

"Huh-! ?" questioned a male voice.

"What the-!" exclaimed the masculine voice of the hollow.

_"Ah, it's good that we were all in one spot so I could do that," _thought the gazelle-masked figure only to duck down and dodge a swift kick while hearing the words that accompanied the kick.

"Hey explain what just happened shinigami!" complained the adjuchas Abdul.

After dodging he jumped back, landing on a perpendicularly facing tree branch of a different quartz tree as he silently gazed at the three individuals he had transported out of the gaol with Sentan Hakuja.

_"It's funny, how now I'm the one being asked the questions."_

Swiftly, he turned around saying nothing to his previous "passengers" and began calmly walking the length of the tree branch.

"Hey! I'm talking to you! Where do you think you're going? !" half demanded/questioned Abdul to which the shinigami simply answered without turning around.

"Let's just say I've taken you up on your previous offer...," he trailed off cryptically.

"What are you talking abou-"

ZZZZZEEEEEOOOOOOOOPAOOOOOOWW !

A light almost like a flash from right before a nuclear warhead explosion flashed as what seemed to be a vastly far off giant plasma hued cero erupted with the brightness of what could be compared to a number of things. A gamma ray burst from either a galactic core or magnetar? A quasar even? Regardless, the shockwaves brought some form of vicarious life to the desolation of the forest if only for that brief instant.

_"N-no way!" _thought the girl Orihime who had formed her shield in defense and yet was still bracing herself behind it with her arms.

_"That explosion's coming from-! ?" _thought the human boy Chad. Abdul simply shut his eyes out from the brightness in abrupt shock at having been cut-off mid-sentence by such a blast.

The gazelle masked Ashido didn't even turn around to view or brace himself against the extremely far-off yet close seeming explosion, seemingly unaffected. Finally he spoke for the second time since arriving in the new area, back still to his audience as he continued his ambling away from them.

"I'm thankful and glad you all helped me escape. I'm sorry if bringing you out here against your will throws whatever plans you had off their axes, but if you want to go back to that _there_," he said gesturing towards the source of the explosion with his thumb, "then feel free to do so, but I'm going my own way now. Though, you can follow me if you wish I guess," he said, flashing away right as his last syllable became audible. The three who were left simply looked on with blank faces before taking in what just happened.

"Tch, So now this guy is trying to act 'cool' all of a sudden. If he thinks he's ditching us that easily-!"

_"I couldn't tell because of his mask, but I'm sure he was being sarcastic when he said we can 'go back if we want'," _thought an amused Chad.

However Orihime was already ahead of them, returning Tsubaki, Ayame, and Shun'ō into hairpin pieces and stepping onto Santen Kesshun, fusing her soles into it.

"He said he decided to 'take us up on our offer' earlier, but I'm not sure what that means...so let's catch up with him and see where he's going!" shouted Orihime. And the chase was on. Abdul speeding up ahead of Orihime of course. As she and Chad rode on the shield, they took in the sights of the forest.

"There's nothing out here besides these trees," thought Orihime unintentionally aloud.

_"...Hey wait a second, these trees! They're the same ones we saw up on the desert except they must be the very tips of the ones we're seeing down here. They reach all the way to the desert and poke through the canopy...," _noticed the girl before Chad interrupted her inner revelation, answering her previous statement.

"Yeah, I noticed. Shouldn't hollows be out here or something? Speaking of which, there were no hollows on the desert either,"

"It's strange. It could be because of these hollows from whatever this base is...," speculated Orihime.

"We don't really know for sure though Inoue. We've never been to Hueco Mundo so we don't know how things run here,"

"True...but this base place...that adjuchas said it was called...um...Los Seis..Pilares? 'Los Seis Pilares' right?"

"Yeah, and we can only hope this shinigami has answers. That was the reason we 'rescued' him wasn't it? And he seemed to know to get us out of there right at that very moment for some reason," said Chad referring to how Ashido had used some type of technique to basically teleport them far away from Segunda Cárcel.

"Alright then, let's speed things up a little! Santen Kesshun!" shouted Orihime using part of the technique's kotodama to increase the speed. The speed easily multiplied by five to six factors. Not wanting to waste any more time she completed the kotodama "I reject!". This was the fastest the shield had ever went. Orihime was putting all her vitality into it. It was going in the same range of speed as when Yachiru sprinted full speed in the Soul Society.

The girl was in the front corner of the triangular shield, standing on it as if she were the figurehead on the bow of a ship. Chad looked at her from behind at the 'stern'.

_"She's getting stronger. And I...something felt off with me when I woke up in the cell before her. It wasn't the numbness, but something different. And ever since up on the desert..and the ripples in the sand...it's..."_

"Hm? Sado-kun, are you alright?"

"Hm!? Yeah, I'm fine Inoue."

"Oh ok, good because we're almost there!" she shouted over the wind, coming to the last tree branch before seeing a large stone outcropping with a small cave entrance.

Abdul was waiting at the edge of the outcropping.

"I'm surprised you waited on us," commented Chad as they landed.

"I'm sure you two felt it. That the shinigami's reiatsu disappeared that is. Judging by when I felt it disappear, he couldn't have gone that much further so I'm taking a wild guess and betting he's hiding inside that there cave."

"Eh, what are you talking about? You're right that it seems like he's trying to hide his presence, but I still sense him right inside there. See? I'll show you!" said Orihime running on the outcropping's flat surface, and up to the cave entrance with Abdul and Chad behind her. She got to the entrance and ran right through, feeling the air change as she did. She didn't think much about it since air always changes when you go inside somewhere from outside. It was only when she turned to look back and see that Chad and Abdul had ran into some type of barrier a mere half a meter behind her that a revelation hit her.

_"This is just like the time with my finding out where Kurosaki-kun was at when I discovered the Visored warehouse. I was the only one that was able to sense him, and when I got there I had to diffuse though Hachi-sensei's barrier. They all seemed surprised that I was able to do that. Apparently, it was the best of the best barrier-wise. He said he had even made it with his Visored powers, but it was easy to just concentrate and slip through it since it was familiar to my own shields. But this barrier here? I ran right through it without even noticing it? I remember thinking Hachi-sensei's barrier was like moving through a wall of water, but maybe Hachi-sensei's barrier really was that powerful if this barrier was barely even a wall of air that I didn't even recognize as a barrier? It only felt like the air changed after all."_

As if on the same wavelength, all three of them attacked the invisible barrier. Orihime from her side with Tsubaki, and Abdul and Chad from their side with their fists. Instantly they were running down the path together(or in newly summoned Tsubaki's case, flying). Along the way they saw what seemed to be little opening in the left-side wall which seemed to be stockpiled with edible fungi and mosses, as if they'd been gathered over time. Coming out to the main part of the cave they saw him.

He was sitting on the side to the right on a raised flat platform type of rock covered in green/blue-ish moss. Orihime couldn't help but notice the big ball of kidō in the middle of the ceiling being used to light up the whole cave. It mesmerized, and reminded her of a 'blue sun' like she had seen in science textbooks.

What really caught her attention though was how Ashido no longer had his gazelle mask on. He was sitting down, arms folded across his quadriceps without even looking up at the new arrivals. Orihime only just noticed that he had no sandals like other shinigami. He had spiky marroon red hair and a serious facial expression; almost a weary one.

"So the mask actualy comes off after all," taunted Abdul walking out of the end of the path and further into the opening in the cave. Seeing no response from Ashido he simply went to the opposite wall and leaned against it, making himself smugly comfortable.

"Not gonna talk huh? Funny. A guy invites us to his apparent humble abode, but makes us bust down the door to get inside, and then once we do that, we get the silent treatment. Is there something maybe you want to talk about," he asked in a feigned voice of caring.

"The barrier was a final test of your strength. It's like I said. I've taken you up on your offer adjuchas. The one where you said we'd 'sit around a camp fire and tell our life story later'. Well it's 'later' now, and since we're in my cave away from any distractions, I plan to make you do good on that promise. For now though, my kidō ball up there is the closest you'll get to a campfire," said Ashido with complete seriousness.

Abdul lost his composure at this. The way Ashido had quoted his sarcastic quote so seriously had thrown him off. "Wha-? ! I was just joking when I said-"

"-I don't joke adjuchas. And as it stands now, along with how they stood before outside my cell where the two humans were only just then introducing themselves to you, it seems we all still have some sort of explanations to give to one another. And since the two humans seem to be the masterminds behind everything from what I've heard and observed, why don't they go first and then everything else will fall into place," suggested Ashido in an efficient manner.

He knew how to get right down to business with no small talk. Plus he was curious about what he felt when a certain human easily slipped through his barrier. The barrier indeed had functioned as a test for a lot of different factors. And because of it, he now knew more about his 'house guests' than they knew about him. The having them to chase him, sense him, break down the barrier only to then see his face for the first time as if he had nothing to hide? Psychology was subconsciously his strong suit.

"Tell me," he said finally looking up, "How can humans have spiritual power and what are you doing in Hueco Mundo?" Orihime did a quick look at Chad that said 'let me explain'. Ashido didn't seem to miss their brief connection. Was there something she wanted to tell through her own words? If so, then why? For what reason?

Abdul however saw this as an opportunity to finally get the further information Chad had promised before breaking him out that he and Orihime had been seemingly holding out on since.

"Hold up, let me tell my story of how I ended up getting captured first and get it out the way," suggested Abdul. And he did so, re-telling exactly what he had told Orihime and Chad.

"Hmm. Once again I have to say how our stories are similar adjuchas, but before I tell mine it's once again their turn. You say they were the ones to break you out?" asked Ashido now looking at the two humans with even more intrigue.

At this Orihime took this as her cue to answer Ashido's questions.

"You asked how we can have spiritual powers and what we're doing here? We weren't always spiritually aware. In fact, after today, there's only seven more days until we've had our spiritual powers for exactly two months. We were only spiritually aware for a brief while before we awakened our powers," she said remembering how she had sensed the hollow on the roof before it had attacked Tatsuki and her classmates; even if she hadn't known she'd been "sensing" a "hollow" at the time she just had a bad feeling surrounding her then. Then there's the fact that because Rukia's memory scramble device had failed, she never did really forget encountering her brother as a hollow. That's why the hollow that attacked herself and her classmates had unnerved her so much. And Urahara's big reveal of the world of the afterlife became that much easier to accept despite her still being in denial even as she and Chad watched Ichigo and Uryū battle the menos grande from across Karakura.

_"She counted the exact number of days?"_ thought Chad sweat-dropping_. "And only two months? It seems much longer than that." _

"These people behind me are Baigon, Hinagiku, and Lily. You saw how I used them to form my shield Santen Kesshun," she went on.

Ashido took note that she called them not, 'creatures', or 'fairies' or any other derivative, but instead called them 'people'. As he thought on it he saw a flash of golden light appear from her hair pins and two more of the same beings appeared.

"And these two," she said, as two lights came from the side of her head, "are Ayame and Shun'ō," I use them to heal. And that's Tsubaki, you've seen them all already and what they can do right? All together, they're the Shun Shun Rikka."

Right then Chad did a quick look to Orihime as if to say he was about to speak, "Even as a human, I'm pretty durable. And I was able to help fight off a hollow even before I was spiritually aware of them at all. But once I actually both became aware and awakened my power, I realized that with my right arm's armor," began Chad materializing the armor over his arm, "since activating it increases my reiatsu overall, it doesn't just do a spot treatment and make only my right arm stronger, but it increases my overall durability as well as making the right arm that much more powerful. My punches are extremely dense, concentrated and along with that, there's this,-" said Chad, as the as the bluish-white energy blast materialized around his fist and wrist, "which is just a little something extra," he finished, gesturing at Orihime to continue as he powered down and de-materialized his arm.

"It's like I said, we weren't always this way. We're just humans who became spiritually aware and developed powers thanks to constantly being influenced by the reiatsu of a shinigami," explained Orihime.

_"More wordless cues between the two...so they are being frugal with details after all, but they know other shinigami!" _thought Ashido, who was now regretting taking off his mask and losing his default conversational poker face as a result. Luckily he was able to not let any emotions get transferred from his mind onto his face. Abdul also noticed the continuing frugality, although happy he had at least gotten further info of some sort; or rather that it had been clearified.

_"Hm? So they are connected to shinigami after all? That explains their little soft spot for this one..," _thought Abdul still leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed and eyes closed.

Orihime then started explaining what she told Abdul up on the desert, albeit purposely with a little more detail which Abdul didn't fail to notice, yet at the same time she curiously left out a certain detail that she had revealed to him with no problem.

The girl started of with how they were training, the hollows came and attacked, they defeated them, but were exhausted and accidentally caught in the negación. They detailed some of what the hollows had said, how they implied that they had come to the human world to 'harvest souls' before they set their sights on Chad and Orihime. How they woke up in the dark cell after being trapped in a negación post-fight, busted out of said cell and then broke Abdul out and fought the warden before regrouping up on the desert and confirming their ambiguous partnership together with the adjuchas. From there they had invaded to break out Ashido since the warden they had defeated had mentioned him. She mentioned how they figured they could get some extra information from him as she relayed their motives.

"So you see Kanō-san, we had questions to be answered. Why are hollows after random human souls not to eat, but to capture, and upon learning Sado-kun and I's spiritual awareness and abilities, made us prime targets? Even then they wanted to not eat, but capture us, and _even then_, there were no other humans in the gaol, not even normal ones with no reiatsu. That just further emphasizes our questions. We know they had interest in Tarragó-san since like he said in his story, they asked him to 'join them' and when he said 'no', they captured him too sentencing him to being 'shipped' to this 'headquarters' as well. So we decided freeing you would offer us a different perspective. If they captured hollows in Hueco Mundo, and went to the human world to capture humans, did they go to the Soul Society to capture Shinigami?"

Chad and Abdul now finally understood Orihime's thought process as all her inner thoughts came full circle.

_"I knew everything up untill that last line...I hadn't even thought about it like that. Did they really go to the Shinigami world?" _thought Abdul now with genuine curiosity as he opened one of his eyes to observe Ashido's reaction, only to realize and correct himself before Orihime confirmed it with her next words how off his thoughts had been just then.

"But seeing that mask, and your referring to this cave as 'my cave' makes me wonder," trailed Orihime forming a long silence before the shinigami sighed.

"It's because the opposite of what you said is true. Hollows didn't drag me to Hueco Mundo. I chased them into it."

The reactions were evident across his audience, Rikka included. What a plot twist indeed.

"It happened centuries ago. A horde of hollows had uncharacteristically transversed through a garganta to the Soul Society; something that's a rare occurrence. Normally when they try to go there by garganta, they end up accidentally coming out in the Dangai instead, and the Dangai's very nature keeps intruders out after all. Plus, any experienced hollows are wary of Soul Society because of the presence of shinigami. Any lucky newborn hollows that manage to go there without ending up in the Dangai as easily dispatched of. So as my fellow squad members and I fought off the invading hollows, we took chase as they retreated to Hueco Mundo. Fearing that this was a out of the ordinary coordinated attack and they would return, we followed them attempting to finish them off and unintentionally ended up here ourselves; the very arrival spot not far from here. We knew where we were, but kept fighting anyways. But by then there were too many hollows. We were on their turf, and then the Gillian even got involved. It happened so fast. My friends in my unit one by one went down in that horrible battle. Eventually only one other person and I were left; He had gotten a little injured, so I covered him so he could rest for a moment, but that hollow! It came out of nowhere and got him! Still, he was so strong that even wounded he was able to completely kill the hollow, stripping it of it's mask before dying himself," he said picking back up the very same gazelle mask.

"And so I used that mask, _this _mask, to block the Gillian cero's and finish the rest of them off myself with more strength than I ever had before," finished Ashido finally breathing in new air.

"And I've been here ever since. There is a way out of this forest...out of Hueco Mundo...but I stayed because I'm a shinigami. I realized all the hollows that invade the human world originate from this place. As a shinigami meant for protecting humans, it was only right for me to remain here. Along with cleansing souls and sending them to the Soul Society, I would be protecting the human world and other shinigami from having to deal with hollows...Or so I thought...Seeing you humans here and knowing you were specifically captured by hollows is like a slap in the face. But that's actually besides the point. I've been here for ages and only recently did any adjuchas show up around here. Let alone Gillian-controlling adjuchas. Gradually they've been increasing in number, and those that controlled Gillian especially all seemed to be organized and connected somehow, seeing as they all came to know who I was during their attacks on me before I even knew who they were. I didn't rule out that it could've just been that rumors spread of a 'shinigami in the forest'. I realize now, that to them I was probably like a cryptid that everyone wanted to find. But the fact that most of them always came for revenge after I would kill one of their apparent teammates, or get in the way of one of their schemes proved otherwise. And ever since their arrivals began, _all_ the hollows have been increasing in strength. I thought I'd be able to handle it, and things were going just fine until what I've concluded was about a week ago," continued Ashido.

Before anybody could ask how he concluded such a time frame, he continued.

"There was a team of adjuchas that called themselves 'The Guardians of the Menos Forest'. I used to always give them trouble and now they were giving it back to me. I woke up to sensing them attacking the barrier at the entrance of this cave. I went out to give chase, and they fled, unknown to me that they were leading me to the area that they somehow figured out was where I'd marked the graves for all my friends who were killed. It was an ambush, they'd brought their own friends. I managed to defeat all their comrades and killed three of 'the guardians' themselves, and was about to lay the final blow to the leader, 'The Guardian' himself, before I found myself hit in the back by what seemed to by a barrage of projectiles. At the exact same time, The Guardian had his head blown off by a garnet cero. I turned around to see none other than the warden who was I'm guessing was apparently the younger brother of the adjuchas we just escaped from with his hand still extended from his blast, and behind him were five other adjuchas all standing in the air on nearby tree branches. All of them had entire armies of Gillian behind them.

I managed to compose myself only for the Gillian to shoot attacks that I thought were ceros but were instead some type of prison forming beams that reminded me of negación's natural barrier. In all my years, I had never seen such an attack. It was actually the same attack that the bird adjuchas back there was about to use on us. That's why I was able to react so fast and get us out of there with my kidō."

Chad's question earlier on how Ashido knew what to do had been answered while Orihime and the Rikka were listening intently on the bit about kidō before he continued.

"After being trapped in the prison I realized these adjuchas were different than the others. They all seemed completely foreign and unaffiliated with both the hollows around this area of the forest, and the native adjuchas. Seeing the six of them rip apart and devour The Guardian proved that thought as the Gillian picked me up in that prison. It was then that I realized how unresponsive I'd been after getting hit with the projectiles. Why hadn't I even tried to dodge the prison forming beams, why hadn't I attacked the prison trying to escape? These adjuchas weren't even paying any attention to me as they finished their meal. I managed to feel my back and realized whatever all had hit my was physically lodged into me. I pulled one of them out and saw it. It was a needle that had already expunged it's contents...meaning all of them had auto-injected upon contact with me. I understood too late as my vision went blury and the world slowed down. Everything slowly went black and my body went numb," explained Ashido.

Shun'ō's eyes widened at the last line. _"Could it be...!"_

"The next senses I had were audial and more numbness. I heard lots of screaming; the screams of hollows which made me open my eyes. Yet still all I could see was darkness and then suddenly light flooded my eyes out of nowhere."

_"Tch. That must've been when they cut on the lights in the gaol,"_ observed Abdul.  
><em><br>"I'm not sure about Sado-san, but Orihime felt numbness when she woke up and was even pale as if she had no blood flowing when we healed her while she was sleeping. Could these hollows have used these 'needles' on her too? But then what about Sado-san? He was wide awake even before Orihime finally came to. Is he just that tough that it didn't effect him as much? I wouldn't be surprised. Then again I'm getting ahead of myself. This is all guesswork, but I guess it'll come up again later,"_ contemplated Shun'ō.

"Disoriented from the light and the numbness, I still got myself up and walked toward the light only to hit a wall. It was the same opaque glass-like wall that was in each cell of the gaol to hold the prisoners inside. It was then that I understood that light was only coming from outside, while still being dark inside my cell and I had only just regained the ability to even wonder where I was. Not wanting to do something brash on potential enemy territory, I just sat back down trying to figure it all out. That is, until I heard an argument happening right outside the cell. I prepared myself for anything as the glass was actually sliced, and you all know the rest," finally finished Ashido only to hear immediate applause.

"Oh! Oh man, what a—I mean what a tale!" praised Abdul as he stopped clapping. "In all seriousness though, cool story and all, but what I got from your long angsty backstory was that you're weak and know squat about the hollows. See you two?" said the still cross-armed Abdul looking over at Chad and Orihime. "He's just like I said he'd be, but I hope you're satisfied with your 'rescue the shinigami side-quest'. Now then," he said opening his eyes, uncrossing his arms, "On to the main mission!" he finished getting off the wall he was leaning on and making his way towards the exit path between Chad and Orihime.

Nobody made to budge though as an annoyed Abdul turned around.

"Adjuchas, I'm sure you've heard of 'bad reading comprehension' and 'eidetic memory'. Well you're proving yourself to be the poster child of 'bad audio comprehension' and Alzheimer's."

"What? !"

"Oh? So the 'bad audio comprehension' persists even in the short term? I'm clearly saying you didn't listen to my story just now and even forgot what I said back in the gaol. Back then, I said our stories were similar and now with my side of the story you should see how."

"Oh please! They're nothing alike! I actually fought the six adjuchas while you got beat up by some needles. Big difference there buddy," chastised Abdul.

"At least he didn't get thrashed by said hollows and have his arm bitten off," interjected Tsubaki taking control of the conversation.

"In fact, out of all of us, you were the only one that showed up at the gaol with any injuries at first," finished the bandanna wearing Rikka issuing a grunt from an off-put Abdul.

"I was injured? Wounded? This coming from the male _fairy_ that gets turned into a _hairpin_. Your pride must be _eternally wounded_—if you even have any that is..."

That particular comment led to inevitable banter between the two as Orihime took this time to walk up to the sitting Ashido.

"Thank you for getting us out of the gaol and bringing us here so we could get all these explanations out of the way," she said while tuning and looking over at Abdul currently making fly-swatting motions at Tsubaki before continuing.

"I'm sure he won't admit it, but I can tell Tarragó-san was the most curious about you out of everybody," whispered Orihime in a her patented 'secretive voice'.

Ashido took the moment to look at the innocuous looking girl. _"Why do these humans trust this adjuchas so much? Come to think of it this is the most conversation I've ever had with a human or hollow."_

"Actually Inoue-san..there's one last thing," said Ashido snapping out of his thoughts.

Orihime perked up at his calling of her name for the first time and was all ears. Seeing this, Ashido continued.

"For humans, you two are pretty knowledgeable and you seem to be in contact with Shinigami," began Ashido, cuing Chad to come over.

"I've been here for so long that I can't even be called a Shinigami. At least not one of the Seireitei anyway. I'm out of touch, so I have to ask, what's going on in the outside world? Soul Society in particular. I mean, shinigami causing humans to gain spiritual awareness and powers because of their leaking pressure? Don't shinigami still wear limiters to prevent that from happening? Either way, I've heard of it causing awareness, but not full-blown unique power development. And the increasing strength of the hollows like I talked about before, and these completely new ones who managed to capture me...All this has happened only recently and is out of the ordinary and your mentioning of shinigami seeming to have increased involvement in the human world has made me curious. Especially since hollows have taken you from said human world itself."

After the two humans exchanged the familiar looks with each other it was somehow decided that Chad would be the speaker. Ashido could tell he had unintentionally hit the territory they had wanted to be frugal about.

"Hmm. I'm not sure if Soul Society is connected to everything you're talking about such as the hollows getting stronger, but...," trailed Chad as if at a lost before Orihime picked up the tab.

"The Soul Society...it's been going through some hard times," said Orihime remembering Aizen and the two other captain's defections; how they rose up the negación into Hueco Mundo.

_"That's right...Aizen...the arrancar...the espada...It's weird to think about it, but...they're all in Hueco Mundo somewhere at this very moment," _thought Orihime before snapping out of her brief pause.

"The Soul Society isn't united like it once was, and some horrible things happened there recently," explained the chestnut-brown haired girl. Ashido didn't miss her sub-second pause and look of contemplation on her face though. That contemplative look had turned solemn as she had continued talking, but now it filled with conviction.

"And this winter, a decisive battle is taking place, and Sado-kun and I plan to be in it. That's the reason we were training before the hollows came and interfered," explained Orihime.

_"Oh? So she decided to tell him after all. Maybe she just forgot to at first. And this 'trouble' in the shinigami world...She's mentioned this 'upcoming battle' twice now but...," _thought Abdul before Orihime interrupted his thought process.

"But now that we ended up here, we're going to use it to our advantage! We're going to have to go up against these hollows and make sure the same things don't happen to other humans," she explained inciting a scoff from Abdul.

"Um yeah, because there's actually more humans getting kidnapped and put in comfy cells by nice hollows instead of getting killed and eaten like normally? Pretty sure that's not the case. With your self-righteous logic you might as well genocide all of Hueco Mundo," reasoned Abdul getting a glare from Tsubaki.

Chad suddenly got what Orihime was doing. He was pleased that they were back on the same wavelength unlike the lag he faced in the gaol right after freeing Abdul. What she was doing was similar to how he got him to spar with her and how he got Abdul to partner with them. But now she was taking it to another level.

"You're kind of missing the point though," responded Chad. This made Abdul do a reaction as if he was raising his non-existent eyebrows.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," answered Chad simply before walking in the middle of the three audience members and the Rikka.

"I know newborn hollows have a knack for eating people they were connected with when living. That's why Inoue and I want to find out _why _this happened in the first place. Because I hardly feel they want to just capture humans to feel nostalgic for when they were alive."

Orihime appreciated Chad actually bridging the gap between the point she was trying to make as she added on.

"It's not like it isn't the same for both of you too. We _all _got captured," she said before turning to Abdul. Tarragó-san, you want the hollows who ate your arm, and Kanō-san, you were wondering why the hollows of this forest were getting stronger, but then a completely different group came and captured you," said Orihime, motioning what she meant through gestures somehow.

"So you're trying to say I should have the same exact motives to get answers from these hollows as you two? I see. It's different than the adjuchas and his personal vendetta," commented Ashido to the ire of said adjuchas.

"Tch. Please, I don't do this often, but I'm begging you. Get over yourself shinigami. She was sneaky in doing it, but she implied all of us should want to know what's happening to our 'fellow people'. Let me explain why that's crap as far as I'm concerned. Shinigami have 'community', humans have 'community', but hollows have no such thing! With us, it's everyone for themselves. There is no 'organized life' here. Why should I care what happens to all those weaklings stuck in the gaol back there? That huge blast probably killed them all anyways! Should I care about them as if they're my friends or something just because their hollows? Maybe I had friends at some point myself. Everything before my sentient Gillian stage is a blur, but I have vague memories sometimes. Pictures and flashes of other hollows. Whether they were random hollows or possible allies, I most likely killed and ate all of them either way. But hey, I consider myself likable. Maybe they _were_ my friends. Friends that I ate that is. Who knows, and who cares what really happened. What matters is the present," he explained further.

"So I understand you shinigami. It's the same with how you said all your garbage friends died. I can see it in your eyes. You had to learn the ways of the forest the hard way, and it's hardened you in return. In the end both of us ended up as loners who only relied on ourselves to get where we are now, which is all that matters; the present!" reiterated Abdul.

However, the 'grandeur' of Abdul's rant hardly had time to sink in before he found the tip of a zanpakutō touching his lower back and on the receiving end of a sudden burst of spiritual pressure. The smaller shinigami having shunpo'd behind him and from his lower position at the adjuchas's hip bones, reached up and pressed his blade against the hollow's lower back.

"I'm not sure if I heard you compare yourself to the likes of me or not. It all got blurry after you called my comrades out of name," he said icily as he applied further pressure on his weapon. Abdul didn't seem to mind the blade a bit, unlike earlier in the gaol. He simply raised his hands in a questioning gesture with his back still to the shinigami.

"Ha! Oh wow! What's this now? Didn't you say over and over like a broken record that our stories were similar? I'm just pointing out even more so how that's true and you get upset about it? What're you gonna cry or something?" he said before swiftly jumping away from the blade and turning to face Ashido with Orihime and Chad to his left and right with anxious and stony looks respectively. Then Abdul simply walked backwards to the same opposite wall of where Ashido had been sitting as he continued talking.

"Maybe you're soft after all shinigami, but I'm not here to give sugarcoating lip-service so that over-sensitive people can feel better about themselves. If the girl wants to do some team-building scheme, who cares? But they know what I told them on the desert when I explained in this exact phrase that I'm just 'keeping them around'. I told you that they knew the stakes when they got involved with me, and I told them that as long as they're here they would be dependent on me and that 'If they can't keep up with me, then they're left behind'. Survival of the fittest is the rule of this place and I won't have anyone dragging me down. Who knows. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I have some particular desire for it to end this way, but they could very well end up like the hollows in my memories. In the end they're objectively no different than them anyways. Again, I of course have no reason to just kill them for no reason. I admit they're actually pretty entertaining to be around, but there's no way to know for sure if it'll happen though. I'm just not sentimental enough to make promises either way," explained Abdul nonchalantly.

"Well then I'll simply make sure it doesn't!" shouted Ashido in a extremely fast flash step in the air to behead the taller Abdul only to hit a wall that pushed him back right before his blade made contact with the adjuchas's jugular.

Landing on the ground, Ashido barely realized what happened before the wall dispelled into three beings that flew past him, meeting up with Orihime who simultaneously walked past Ashido's left towards Abdul with a calm look.

All non-Rikka males where shocked in different ways at what just happened.

"You don't mean what you said you know," began even-toned Orihime. "At least not in the way you said it. Not the way you want us to think. Basically saying 'we're left behind to die if we don't keep up'? Aren't you the one who went out of your way to carry us out the gaol when we first escaped? You were right earlier when you talked to us from inside your cell. You said something like 'As long as we're in Hueco Mundo, that we needed you'. Truthfully I took that into account, but it was only a minor afterthought in my reasoning for us to work together. But since it's true in a way that we were relying on you and you were 'simply keeping us around', and I'm the one with the healing ability that helped persuade you to cooperate when I healed you arm, you could've easily just took me and left instead of going and picking up Sado-kun as well and I'd have no say in the matter. It's not like I know my way around Hueco Mundo or how to return to my world. The fact is, that in that small amount of time talking to you and helping you fight the first warden, we formed a sort of 'chemistry'. A chemistry that only got stronger a short while later when breaking out Kanō-san. And now we're on the verge of forming something more. I get it though. To a person who prides themselves on being alone, being with others, especially people like us, must bring up a lot of thoughts and emotions you aren't letting out. And the way you've been acting, it must be pretty scary for you,"

This made Abdul particularly livid. But when he realized how angry he was getting at the girl's words he realized he was proving her point about getting emotional. NO! HE was NOT proving her point! He was mad because of how pretentious and wrong everything she just said was.

"You don't get it do you?! You think everything has to have a reason and that you're the one with all the plans and answers and I'm sick of it! Yeah, I dragged both of you out of the gaol earlier. Why? ! Because I freakin' felt like it. There's no ulterior motives, idiotic back-stories, or pre-meditated schemes going on in my head, so get your psychological crap out of my face and quit trying to figure me out like some therapist! Sure you could say 'I could have just taken you and left him', but I wasn't thinking that far ahead and there was no reason for me to leave him in the first place! So don't use that as proof of your 'chemistry' garbage, because the fact still remains that I don't need any of you. I'm not your friend! There's no exact 'reason' for me to be here, I'm here just to be here!. I go with the flow.** I could kill you all right now, and it wouldn't make a difference-"

He was interrupted by a swift motion of Orihime outstretching her arms. "Then do it," she said simply, eyes closed with finality.

_"What's Inoue up to now?" _thought Chad, visibly stiffening at her words. He was off of her mental wavelength once more. Ashido simply looked on, already having been rebutted by the girl herself after trying to attack the adjuchas, and the Rikka floating behind he and Chad all had crossed arms poker faces.

"W-what? What are you talking about now?" demanded Abdul. Frankly he still thought the girl was loose a few screws, even though he thought she had turned normal after the desert, it seemed she had sadly relapsed.

"If killing us 'wouldn't make a difference', then kill me. 'Why do it' you ask? You're probably thinking 'just like there was no reason for you to leave Sado-kun in the gaol, there's no reason to just randomly kill him or I now right? You actually said that yourself before Kanō-san attacked you just now. But still by your logic, 'It doesn't matter either way'. 'It wouldn't make a difference' right? So you ask 'why do it?', and I ask 'why not?' Go ahead. I'm no different than the forgotten hollows in your blurry memories that you most likely killed as well right?" she reasoned still having her arms outstretched, eyes still closed with a serene expression.

Once again this girl—what was she getting at this time? ! She's always toying with and manipulating him. And the worse part was that it was like she wasn't even trying to. Or was she? Was it all in his mind? He hated people like her. Why was his mind freely open to probing by her while he couldn't even understand her thought process? Wait. Maybe it was he, instead of her that was over-analyzing. Maybe she wasn't in fact some psychological chess master waging a constant brushwar on his mind. Perhaps instead she _was _the ingénue, naïve, gullible girl she appeared to be, hoping that he himself would 'make the right choice' and decide not to kill her—Or maybe that's what she wanted him to think! Either way, he intended to find out.

Calmly he composed himself. "Fine then. Once again, I'll go with the flow and play along with this and if you die, you die!" he shouted charging his trademark sterling silver cero from his mouth.

An unaffected Orihime simply kept the same pose, eyes closed, and arms outstretched. At this Abdul lowered the cero right in her face, completing the charge before it fired hitting the wall that backed where Ashido was sitting earlier when they had first walked into the cave; missing Orihime completely by going past the left side of her face.

After the explosion finished, Orihime calmly opened her brown eyes, using them to bore into Abdul's own golden eyes, before simply tuning around and beginning to make her way back over to Chad and Ashido.

_"That's it? She just walks away! ? Wait! More importantly why didn't I blast her head off? Does that mean she was right? What's so special about her that I couldn't-!"_

"GRAAAAAAAGH!" yelled out Abdul in frustration. Nobody could ever get under his mask besides this girl. The uncharacteristic display of raw emotion got everyone's attention causing the girl in question to turn around.

"You! Why were you going to let me kill you instead of moving off the way? !"

At this, Orihime's eyes widened innocently as if Abdul had asked a question with an easily obvious answer.

"E-eh? What do you mean? I didn't move out the way for the same reason Sado-san or Kanō-san didn't jump in. There was uh,...well the cero didn't really have any killing intent. That's all," she explained over-reassuringly. Suddenly her face morphed to a playful guilty one as she rubbed the back of her head with her hand in her trademark fashion and her next words revealed why she had responded so strangely.

"Ehehe, well to be honest, I didn't really care about that actually. The main reason I didn't get out the way was because the heat from the cero was kind of soothing and finally finished drying my clothes. Even after air-drying them in my 'crash-landing' on the desert they were still wet and I was scared I'd catch a cold wearing damp clothes for so long so I kind of took advantage of you. Sorry!" she admitted sheepishly before her face instantly turned to one of a comically shocking yet serious epiphany.

_"Wait! Maybe he can finish drying my bags too!" _

Yes, Orihime had avoided the dreaded influenza that she seemed so familiar with and there was hope after all for Orihime's damp belongings to save them from the equally dreaded mold and mildew. Meanwhile in Abdul-world©, preocupations were much more grave.

He'd been effectively floored and hadn't gotten past Orihime's initial reasoning for not dodging. 'No killing intent'? His question had been answered so bluntly with such ease that he was at a loss.

Meanwhile the Rikka weren't so sympathetic. Lily, catching Abdul's reaction to it all started things off with a disapproving tone.

"You know, from what I've seen in both actions and words since we met you, you seem like the type to not worry about anything but the present, so why then are you even wondering about what _might_ of happened? Why didn't she move out the way? We'll tell you. Because even if you had an ounce of killing intent, Tsubaki there would've taken care of you the moment your neck so much as twitched to fire the cero at Orihime,"

Abruptly, Abdul turned around to see Tsubaki right behind him with a blasé expression and arms crossed.

_"! When did he-!"_

"Besides easily sensing your lack of killing intent," started Hinagiku across the room next to Chad, interjecting on Abdul's reaction, "being a projectile weapon himself, Tsubaki could see the angle your head tilted upon firing and know whether your attack would misfire or not. For the latter scenario of not misfiring, us three," he gestured to Lily, Baigon, and himself, "would be there instantly as well too block it point-blank. And any damage or recoil she still hypothetically could've received would've been healed by Shun'ō and Ayame immediately. There was no chance for error on any front," concluded Hinagiku tactically.

"In the future you would do well not to leave Orihime's life to a test like you did by assuming she would flee," finished of Baigon ending on a serious note, only for said serious note to cue Tsubaki, still behind Abdul.

"Yeah! What they said! So quit whining already, it's really pathetic and a waste of our time," he chided before gesturing across the cave to Chad. "Shut up so he and the woman can finish what they were saying! That goes for you too shinigami since your little smart aleck side-comment back there to this genius here is what got us off topic in the first place!"

The round-table-esque atmosphere had returned, and the Rikka had ascended to parlimentarian status somehow.

The ensuing silence was stark and awkward. The quiet was even too much for Mr. Silence being Chad himself, so he made to break it.

"Ahem. So it's like we were all saying before, we all can agree in our own ways the we have 'business' with these hollows and similar questions," he continued, making air quotes for the latter word, "that we want answered. So since we're all kind of headed to the same place, it'd be smart to combine out efforts right? Especially after we came this far as working to break out together. Might as well break back in together. It'll save them the time for possibly splitting up their forces to look for us. We can catch them all in one spot so it'll be easier to get the answers we want," explained Chad to his now contemplating audience.

"Hm. I don't see why not," simply stated Ashido sheathing his zanpakutō and walking back over to his gazelle mask that had by it's very nature survived Abdul's cero and put it back on.

"Tch whatever," said Abdul finally breaking his silence. "As long as nobody gets in the way of _my '_business'," he finished, quoting Chad on the latter word which the human boy took note of before responding.

"From the look of things, we'll be going up against the rest of the adjuchas. The first one we fought called himself 'Xodri', and the one we just escaped from that looked like a bird called herself...," trailed off Chad as the name was lost on him.

"Lía," answered Orihime quietly, breaking the brief pause while looking enigmatically at the cave floor.

"Right," said Abdul turning to both of them with one eye open as if he were annoyed at having to repeat himself. "So again, the one's called 'Celvia' and 'Zoréno' are mine," he finished with closure.

"Sado-san, don't tell me you're getting all tactical on me. That's Hinagiku's job. What happened to your patented bust-in-and-charge method?" teased Shun'ō.

"Well, it's not like we know the layout of this 'Los Seis Pilares' base if that crazy gaol was anything to go by," said Chad remembering with caution the borderline other-worldly architecture of Segunda Cárcel.

"But that's never stopped you before," said meek Ayame peeking out of her hood-like Rikka appendages. She liked talking with Chad.

"True," answered the multinational teen with a barely noticeable smirk.

"In the end, we simply go back the way we came. It seems the gaol was on the perimeter of their base since we actually managed to see that faraway massive cero explosion earlier," explained Ashido.

However, a certain particular point he made got some wheels turning in Abdul's head.

"So if we're to make our move, we should do it soon before they regroup," finished Ashido.

"How about in a couple of hours? Inoue and I have basically gotten no sleep," explained Chad going a couple steps up to the exit path and slumping down on the cave wall that held the previously seen upon entering edible mushrooms and mosses that apparently had been a staple of Ashido's diet here in Hueco Mundo***.

"Fine then. It'd be good for you to get some rest so you'll be at full strength, but remember that tactic-wise, our window of opportunity is small," warned Ashido.

"I'm a heavy sleeper, but let's just say I'll be up before the 'window' is shut," answered Chad with an actual smile this time.

The cave was then rebounded by the sound of Orihime clasping her hands together. "Alright, so everything's settled then!" said Orihime breaking her silence with jubilee, before her face darkened.

"But there's one last thing," she said seriously, holding her left index finger up for emphasis.

This even got Abdul's attention, Chad's in particular.

"What is it Inoue?"

"Weeeeell," began Orihime trailing off before the edges of her lips began to curl. "If we're going to be a proper team then we need a proper name!," she finished, slamming her left fist into her right palm with conviction.

A collective non-Rikka male chorus of 'huh's?' echoed out into the cave at once.

"Eh? ! What's with those reactions you guys? Just think for a second! It seems like most of the stronger hollows in this area, and the ones that captured us all, they all are in groups of some sort, or 'squads' in the case of the hollows from the base. And they all, including even the base itself have names! 'Los Seis Pilares', and that one squad that went to check on our cell called 'Los Víboras Hiper'! Even the hollows that Kanō-san said he fought that weren't even part of the base, 'The Guardians of the Menos Forest'. And I'm sure the squad Sado-kun and I fought in the living world had some type of name as well. So what about us? We should come up with something cool!" she reasoned with a passionately pleading look.

With this there was a pause accompanied by three stoic faces and/or masks.

"Uh...Inoue, that sounds nice and all, but isn't it a little...," trailed Chad.

"Stupid?  
>"Contrived?" asked Ashido politely.<br>"Stupid?" repeated you know who.  
>"Too much?" said Chad finally managing to get a response in.<p>

"Wh-Wha? No way," said a shocked Orihime before her face scrunched into her version of a scowl(formerly a pout, but now just a frown).

"We _**need **_a name," she repeated with emphasis eliciting a scoff from Abdul.

"Oh, woah there! Was that you putting you foot down? Look at me quivering over here," teased Abdul.

"Even if we were to pick a name, we would never agree on one. And it's obvious the adjuchas would make things difficult."

"Yeah, because I'm obviously 'that guy' of the group."

"Well at least you yourself understand," retorted Ashido. Abdul walked right into that one.

"Tch, and just what would _you _call us anyway? 'The Zanpakutō's'? What and basically beg the enemy to break out the phallic references and jokes? And knowing our resident shinigami fanclub here, these two would blindly agree with whatever you say. No thank you!" declared Abdul.

"And you adjuchas? What would you name us? Something unoriginal most likely. With your seeming extreme lack of creativity let's just hope you're at least able to put 'mask' into the title."

"Hey, you said it, not me, but if you want me to go with that, then I have to point out that you're wearing a mask yourself, and practically have a shrine of them on the back of your...fur coat...thing. Those two could each wear one of them and we'd have our theme set," suggested Abdul. Personally he couldn't care less about this conversation right now. A name? A "theme" for "their team"? Somebody punch him in the mask repeatedly _please_. Yet he just threw out a non-serious suggestion just to go with things. Unfortunately, the apparent 'suggestion committee' couldn't take a obvious joke.

"A 'hollow theme' in a world of hollows. This is the originality of the adjuchas first hand."

_"Ignore. Ignore. Do. Not. Respond,"_ thought Abdul starting up a self-control mantra.

_"Sorry, but Hirako-kun already has the 'masked' theme down with 'Visored'(masked army)," _thought Orihime.

"Masks aren't my thing. I'll pass," finally answered Chad with his 'rejection voice'.

"Mine either...so I'll do the same," echoed Orihime. Personally the thought of wearing a hollow mask unnerved her. It was the mask of a fallen human soul after all meaning it used to be physcially part of them. Plus, she would rather be one-hundred percent human in both appearance and spirit. And despite her self-proclaimed 'three-dimensional z-axis' culinary interests, she had no cravings for souls of any kind.

Abdul and Ashido simply did "suit yourself" body language as the Rikka observed the conversational impasse.

"We can't just give up you guys. We need to find something that defines us. Look at us! A shinigami, an adjuchas, and two humans," continued Orihime.

_"Sooo...this conversation is actually continuing? Is that what's happening," _pondered Abdul rhetroically.

"And if we came out our bodies, Sado-kun and I would both be pluses. So then it's like the three main types of souls are all working as one. Our name can't favor only one of the types of souls. Together we're our own unique faction."

"When you say 'faction' it reminds me of 'sect'. Since you want an unbiased name, should we just call ourselves a group of souls or something? A soul sect?

"'Soul sect' huh?" questioned Shun'ō.

"I don't know...it sounds borderline cultish to me," added Lily, hand on her cheek.

"But that's what makes it sound cool," argued Tsubaki.

"'Soul Sect'...?" said Orihime unsurely sounding out the words on her tongue as if sizing up a pair of clothes in an department store.

Ashido was probably sweatdropping under his gazelle mask, but we'll never know. "Uh, I wasn't trying to submit that as a name, I was asking if that's what we were."

"But it _is _what we are," said Chad speaking up from his sitting position in the exit path. "And that's why we should own it, but call use 'Alma Secta' instead," he finished.

"And what exactly is the point of that? It means the same thing," pointed out Abdul.

"Yeah," he responded, pausing before slowly grinning, "but it sounds cooler," he finished, flashing his trademark thumbs up to the unnoticed sweatdropping of all the Rikka.

_"Is this guy for real?" _deadpanned Abdul.

"Hmm. I agree. It _does_ roll off the tongue better," admitting Ashido.

_"Oh! Oh boy! Did I hear right? The shinigami's CONCURRING!" _thought an incredulous Abdul sarcastically while mentally flailing.

"Bingo! Looks like we've got a winner!" shouted Hinagiku.

"Whatever. This was a waste of time," said a stoic Abdul walking away from the wall he leaned on, and past everyone towards the exit.

"Where are you going?" asked a confused Orihime. Unlike last time, this time they knew he wasn't all talk and no action and was actually leaving no matter what.

Certain specific thoughts from earlier rolled through Abdul's mind as he slowly turned his head around and looked at the girl before responding with a simple word.

"Out."

The intense buzz of sonído then confirmed his lack of presence in the cave.

At this Orihime looked urgently at Tsubaki.

_"Tsubaki-kun, go follow him," _thought the concerned girl, and Tsubaki obeyed, flying right off out of the cave after Abdul's reiatsu trail.

Chad noticed the wordless gesture. It technically wasn't anything new since she could already do her Rikka techniques without calling the Rikka names and the name of the techniques like she used to. But now she was communicating with them wordlessly beyond simple attacks or techniques. He reasoned this wasn't much of a stretch though since they really were like a zanpakutō. The Zanpakutō spirit knows the wielder, the wielder has to learn about the zanpakutō spirit. It only makes sense they would know her thoughts. The specifics and other important details of Orihime's relationship and connection with the Rikka differed of course but those general core points held true at some level.

"Don't worry. He'll be back," said Ashido suspiciously behind his mask.

"Aw man, those guys better not get into trouble or keep us waiting when we're ready to go back," complained Lily. Her eyes had narrowed to admonishing slits behind her familiar transparent yellow sunglass-styled goggles.

"Eh? Don't worry Lily. Tsubaki-kun can just re-summon himself," said Orihime in a consoling tone. Lily could get worked up about things but never showed it this overtly, and she was one of the more overt Rikka at that. Slowly the pink-haired Rikka's eyes widened back to normal size as she put her arms akimbo.

"Strangely it's actually not Tsubaki I'm concerned about this time," she said with a huff that turned into a sigh.

"Either way, you should get some rest like Sado over there. And having your 'Rikka' out only diminishes your spiritual pressure, although you seem to have good control over having them out for long periods of time."

Orihime lit up the cave with a smile at that, nearly drowning out the brightness of the 'blue sun' ball of kidō in the ceiling. It's one thing to know it yourself, but for another to acknowledge it and verify your thoughts...

"Kanō-san..uh..I don't know about Sado-kun, but I'm not tired since I just woke up in the cell a while ago. Even if I didn't get much of it, I haven't been able to even think about sleep since I've been here. Plus, " she said walking over closer to Ashido before whispering. "If Sado-kun really was a 'heavy' sleeper like he said, he wouldn't have woken up before me in the cell,"

_"Huh? Is she trying to say he's awake? He's clearly asleep...I don't get it."_

"And besides," said Orihime no longer whispering, moving onto new topics as she made to bring up a certain subject that came up at the end of her conversation with the Rikka in the skies above the desert. She slipped off the same damp drawstring bag she had been wearing the whole time.

"Ever since I learned a shinigami was being held somehwere in the gaol, I wanted to find them so I could show them something, and now this is the perfect situation for that," she said opening the large bag and reaching inside. Shuffling past her still wet school uniform that she had changed out of up above the desert, she finally took hold of the item she'd been looking for.

"It got really wet from my fight earlier this morning in the living world, but someone I respect a lot gave me this for my studies so I can't just throw it away. See?" said Orihime pulling the object out of the bag.

Ashido looked and saw a waterlogged large red what seemed to be textbook with a simple monochromatic cover with bright gold text on the front.

The book read, "Zankensoki: The Essentials. With emphasis in Hohō, 3rd Edition".

The book had some interesting contributing authors. A rather notable individual of the lower noble house of Fēng for example. That made sense, considering the book's title. There was one last name that stood out at the very bottom, but it didn't seem to be as important as the rest.

**Hachigen Ushōda**.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started: ?  
>Chapter Finished on paper: Mar 11, 7:38 PM est<br>Chapter Typed: Aug 7th, 10:59 AM est-Aug 9th 11:30-40 PM est  
>Revisions: Mar 11, 7:38 PM est-Saturday Aug 11th 1:53 PM est<strong>

^Notice how I've amended the above chapter stats. That is how it will be for from now on. Well, as long as I write on paper first before typing.  
>Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.<p>

*Abdul saying Orihime should destroy all hollows harkens back to Rukia saying Ichigo can't pick and choose which hollows to kill in the 2nd chapter of Bleach I believe.  
>**Abdul 'going with the flow' goes back to chapter nine when he said the same thing in deciding to actually talk to Orihime and Chad, not even freaking out that they were humans in Hueco Mundo, humans with spiritual awareness, and powers, or that they had actually broken out their cell.<br>***Yes, Ashido did have a ton of mushrooms and mosses in his cave in the anime episode.

**Quote:** "A rather notable individual of the lower noble house of Fēng".  
>-Yes Fēng as in Suì-Fēng. Aka Soi-fon if you are unfamiliar with the official romanization of her name. I'm not saying the person is Suì-Fēng, but just a person from her family.<p>

**Quote:**"Normally when they try to go there by garganta, they end up accidentally coming out in the Dangai instead, and the Dangai's very nature keeps intruders out after all. Plus, any experienced hollows are wary of Soul Society because of the presence of shinigami. Any lucky newborn hollows that manage to go there without ending up in the Dangai as easily dispatched of."

^-Truthfully, I'm not entirely sure about this at all. But it makes sense. Otherwise, hollows would come to Soul Society in droves since unlike the human world, everything is already a soul with spiritual awareness. I forgot the exact reason hollows don't do this course of action though, so bare with my made up reasoning.

**Quote:** "I've been here for so long that I can't even be called a Shinigami. At least not one of the Seireitei anyway."

-Now you know why Ashido said in his first appearance at the end of chapter eleven and repeated in chapter 12 to not call him 'shinigami'.

-The adjuchas group Ashido says he fought in his back-story were actually the ones Ichigo&co, along with himself and Rukia end up fighting in the anime. Hooray for continuity. About 'Visored' meaning 'masked army', that's what the japanese Kubo uses for it means. That's not what the word 'visored' actually means.

-Yes, this chapter points out that Orihime version of a scowl has now evolved from a pout to a frown(lets see who remembers that random detail from previous chapters)

-Shun'ō speculates Orihime got injected by the needles as well which caused her numbness. Now let me repeat what I said in chapter eleven's pre-chapter notes: "Go back and re-read Orihime's dream sequence in chapter nine." lol.

-Map/Diagram of 'Los Seis Pilares' coming next chapter.


	14. Shooting Down the Satellite

(9/30/12)Since last year and this year, for a while now I've known a period of time would come where I'd be away from the computer for a period of about 2+ months. I just never knew when the exact date would fall, but now I finally have a possible window of time. I just didn't want to announce it until I had an idea of when it would fall. So now I can say it's possible that a hiatus will start Jan 8th, 2013. I will be able to confirm if this is true by the end of the week in my profile page. If so, then the story will be up to around chapter 29 before the end of this year(2012).**  
><strong>This chapter has been brought to you by the amazing 'Em Dash' and the terrific 'semi-colon'.  
>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.<p>

* * *

><p>Shooting Down the Satellite<br>-

Mobilization: Target Sighted

**September 10th**

**8:02 AM. A few hours have passed. What has become of newly formed "Alma Secta" in the meanwhile?**

Tsubaki was soaring at top speed in his flight form, which had noticeably increased in maximum velocity.

_"Al...most...there!"_

BUZZ! "Too slow," said Abdul after sonído'ing in front of Tsubaki's flight path with is back to him, cutting him off too close with no room to dodge.

TCHSH! "Too stupid," said Tsubaki, who didn't allow Abdul's appearance to stop his momentum as he turned it into a Koten Zanshun attack, grazing Abdul's back and shoulder and going around him.

"Ah! Why you little,!" shouted Abdul making to grab at Tsubaki only to grasp at a vestigial golden light as the light trail went back to the shinigami's cave. Said cave was apparently functioning as their temporary home base.

Quickly, Abdul landed at the rock outcropping and made to go to the entrance only to see Tsubaki there waiting for him.

"You call that a race? What took you so lon-GUH!" said Tsubaki interrupted by a two-toed navy-blue foot slamming into his profile.

"THAT'S MY LINE! Where did you guys go? !" came Lily's voice as Tsubaki aerially somersaulted to regain his composure.

Tsubaki was sort of miffed at this. Where did he go? Obviously he went after the crazy adjuchas like the woman had told him to. But his response sang a different tune.

"Where did we go? Why don't you just think and concentrate about it for a second? You know exactly where," said Tsubaki cryptically as Lily's eyes began widening only to be interrupted by their wielder.

"Ah! Tsubaki-kun! Tarragó-san Welcome back," came Orihime running halfway up the exit past a seemingly just awakening Chad to greet them. "What were you two doing for so long?"

"Some sightseeing," admitted Abdul with stoicism while looking away.

"Hm? Sightseeing? Well I hope you two are getting along better," she said walking back down the path to the center of the cave and putting an object in her bag as she laid it on the ground against the raised platform-like rock Ashido had been sitting on earlier. "Truthfully, it feels like you two never left," she stated knowingly with an accompanying smirk.

"It's because I had to chase this guy and sense his reiatsu to see where he was going! Turns out he was scouting out the perimeter of the base," said Tsubaki.

This got everyone else's attention. _"The perimeter?" _they all thought variously in unison. Slowly they all came towards the exit to better hear.

"Yeah, it turns out that I actually like to look at my food before eating it. Go figure, right?" drawled Abdul before his demeanor became more serious.

"But more importantly, the shinigami's talking about the gaol being _on _the perimeter earlier made me curious. What exactly marked this "perimeter"? A wall? A ton of quartz trees? We couldn't really tell from even from that explosion earlier. By the time this guy caught up to me," he said gesturing towards Tsubaki, "I was already near the boundaries of what they called 'Segunda Cárcel'. Needless to say, when that happened we almost blew our cover," admitted Abdul to the eye-rolling of the Rikka.

"Yeah, apparently he was scared because I 'snuck up on him'," quoted Tsubaki.

"Wrong! I was annoyed that the girl sent you to babysit me, but that's another topic," countered Abdul to which Tsubaki acquiesced.

Shun'ō simply looked on. It was like they were twisted foils of each other, yet still managed some type of humorous warped companionship.

"But after we both arrived there, that's when we noticed what exactly the perimeter was, and that Segunda Cárcel wasn't _'on_' it like the shinigami said," said a cryptic Abdul.

"What do you mean?" questioned Ashido deeper near the cave center behind Orihime and Chad. The question brought a somehow audible smirk to Abdul's voice. Truthfully, the adjuchas was elated that he was the one with all the plans and explanations for once instead of the two humans.

"Heh! Before you were even conceived in our minds shinigami, we had a little 'chat' with the warden of our gaol and he happened to mention 'other gaols'. It makes sense. Segunda Cárcel itself means 'second gaol'. Remembering what the warden said, this guy and I split up from where we met up and followed along the edges of the base and what do you think happened? !" questioned Abdul rhetorically to ensuing silence. "We ran back into each other—that's what!" answered Abdul to the confusion of his audience.

"Tch! Listen up you guys! The whole 'perimeter' of this so-called base 'Los Seis Pilares' is like the shape of a giant rectangular-square. And the gaols aren't _on _the perimeter as if on the edges, but instead they are on the '_vertices_'; the _corners _of the base! We identified four gaols, including the one we escaped from. One for each corner of the 'square'. It makes sense now that you think about it. I mean, just think about it! With the gaols at the corners, it makes it much easier to drag back local hollows to their base as prisoner and instantly lock them up for this 'shipping'," explained Abdul to the by now familiar reactions of his listeners. But this next part was the best part!

"And shinigami, I seem to recall you saying that you assumed there were some folklore-like rumors among the local populace that there 'was a shinigami in the forest' as if you were some type of myth to them or something? Well I basically just explained the entire foundation of _exactly_ why you got captured," stated Abdul bluntly.

One could tell Ashido has shock on his face despite his gazelle mask. How had the adjuchas figured this much out and put it all together.

"And _still _that's just the beginning," continued Abdul outstretching his arms. "Look at where we escaped from. There were prisoners and in charge was a 'warden'; that kid adjuchas who also controlled Gillian. The bird-girl adjuchas who we ran into before escaping again was also called a 'warden' by one of those squad hollows who reported our cells were empty. Our conclusion? The same six adjuchas who attacked and captured both the shinigami and I run this base. But four of them are wardens who run the gaols in the corners," said Abdul taking a breath while he and Tsubaki looked on at his captivated audience. Were they getting it? Were he and the little twerp explaining things too fast?

"Hey, don't look at us like that. We didn't just have some sudden realization of all of this. It took a long freakin' time of only gradually realizing things. After combing a good distance away from the edges of the perimeter and running back into each other, with my pesuisa and this guy's senses, we each agreed after talking it out that we felt an an adjuchas presence—or at least reaistu residue of one—at each of the remaining three corners. It seems some of them left to help restore order in the base similar to how the girl adjuchas came to our gaol to stop the idiot hollows from rioting. Too bad I made her so mad that she basically nuked the place. That explosion must've put the entire base on the fritz," reasoned Abdul.

"The thing is," began Tsubaki, "we already took out one of the wardens, so only three of them are left, leaving five adjuchas in total."

"And I'm willing to bet," interjected Abdul, "that those other two that aren't wardens are exactly the ones I'm looking for. If that's the case and all our guesswork is true, then they must be deep inside the base itself meaning they must run things and are the strongest. If not, then I'll just hunt down each remaining adjuchas until I find them both!" shouted Abdul somehow making a fist that could be described as 'maniacal'.

"Idiot, don't go off on a tangent. You're forgetting the main point," chided Tsubaki to which Abdul calmed down almost becoming solemn.

"Ah...yes..the main point. Hmm," trailed Abdul.

_"All this info at once is crazy, but why did he get so serious just now? Could it be that big of a deal?" _thought Chad. Suddenly Abdul, turned has back on his audience and made to walk out to the edge of the outcropping.

"Looks like we got back here late and held you guys up after all," he said referring to Lily's disdain at their time of return. He finished walking out to the outcropping edge and looked out into the forest. Slowly his audience followed before a truly scary thought jolted Adbul's mind. Refusing to turn around he voiced his disagreement with the thought.

"Hold on! Wait a sec! Don't even _think_ I'm feeling _guilty _or anything, it's just there's a more important reason we have to attack NOW!" he reasoned.

"And what's that reason?" asked Orihime. She then noticed her Rikka who now all somehow looked like they knew what Abdul was going to say before it was Tsubaki himself who intervened.

"Because woman! The warden-controlled gaols are in the four corners of the base right? And like we said, that kid and his sister the crazy wingless dodo bird-girl were both wardens!"

_"What a description. 'Dodo bird'? Did she really look like that,"_questioned Chad with a sweatdrop as Abdul made to continue Tsubaki's explanation.

"Yeah they were wardens, but both of them didn't have Menos Grande armies just for trophies or to scare the hollow prisoners. No...it's much more significant than that. And both of us learned exactly how significant it was when 'Tsubaki' caught up to me when we first arrived at the base's perimeter. It's the very reason why no local hollow dares to even be within miles of the base itself. Because the perimeter isn't marked by some giant wall made of desert sand or tons of quartz trees like I said I thought earlier. No," he trailed stepping his foot up to the very edge until it leaned off as if making to jump as soon as he finished talking.

"Instead, courtesy of the wardens, the entire base is surrounded by a near infinite wall of Gillian," he finished, finally turning around to see the rest of Alma Secta.

"Let's Go."

**8:30 A.M.**  
><strong>En route to El Centro and its opening to La Basurinera<strong>

As Celvia realized she was previously, Zoréno now too was now having the worst morning ever. First, those fools of his at Dispatch disrupted operations. Then he actually has to _tell_ them how to handle basic protocol with relocating former squad #336 to La Basurinera and the catch of the humans to Segunda Cárcel. Really though! To actually have to assist with such obvious procedures—and _then _summon the other adjuchas to debrief them of the situation face to face; and of course they had taken their sweet time of getting there. At the end of the debriefing he had finalized with Xodri the plans for Segunda Cárcel to include and ship the newly arrived humans along with the hollows inmates and all-important catches made all in the past week alone; the shinigami, and the vulgar adjuchas.

The moment all of them had split back up to return to their posts was when the downward spiral began. The arrowhead-masked adjuchas had simply gone to the depths of Dispatch for a slight reprieve; barely noticing the strange feelings coming from Segunda Cárcel before squads from El Centro came randomly reporting a prison riot and Xodri's disappearance. The latter actually wasn't much surprise since at times of passivity the warden's reiatsus are sometimes drowned out by their Gillian and inmates. It was the apparent prison riot and rogue uncontrolled Gillian that unnerved him to no end. By default, the Gillian always were docile in the presence of their controlling adjucas. Disorderly unruliness signified a true lack of adjuchas presence. It was Xodri's sister Lía who left her own gaol leaving behind her sentient Gillian, and with the then mobilized squads from El Centro, who went to quell the prison riot and investigate. Instantly, prisoner reiatsus dropped in defeat, and Xodri's Gillian were getting re-subjugated. All seemed well until within minutes of their arrival, Segunda Cárcel was blown sky-high as a mass of Gillian ceros blasted out the confines of the gaol completely.

The entire base felt it. Celvia, heading El Centro and La Basurinera immediately put the other wardens on alert to stay at their gaols leaving only he himself left to stop what was happening once and for all. Begrudgingly freezing all of Dispatch's operations, with a makeshift squadron of a good portion of his sentient Gillian, he Sonído'ed to the gaol at top speed or what was left of it. All four gaols were unique, and Segunda Cárcel was built under the base of a giant quartz tree. Upon arriving, the entire massive tree and the entire surrounding area had been blown away leaving a giant steaming sinkhole. The full surface area of the cero blast had nearly pierced up to the desert above. While looking down the dark hole, he saw what were more red lights forming in rapid succession.

Knowing the implication, the goldenrod adjuchas dived into the ocean depths of hollows and cero-charging Gillian that had somehow survived the first blast, as he homed in on the source of chaos being a certain adjuchas. Shocked beyond belief that Lía caused this all, he had to restrain the inconsolable girl as she refused to calm down; and eventually resorted to knocking her out completely before things escalated into a full-on fight. All the remaining squad members put off a certain assigned wavelength of spiritual pressure, thus allowing Zoréno to use his pesquisa to selectively stun all Gillian and inmates alike with his spiritual pressure so it was then possible or the complete reconquering of the gaol. A simple task that Lía was supposed to do, but something went dead wrong here.

The elite squads that accompanied Lía then began their final assault on the inmates and crammed them in the remaining cells; while the elite and normal squads who had been sent initially by Celvia on reconnaissance to investigate the strange happenings, eerie reiatsu, and to "report on Xodri's doings"—only to be run out of the gaol by the prison riot? They too returned for some revenge on the inmates. All in all, the few hours of cleanup were surprisingly quick and efficient under primate-like Zoréno's established order. He _was_commander of the Dispatch Division after all.

Meanwhile he sent out some of his sentient Gillian to report to the other adjuchas. But massive questions still loomed. _Where _was Xodri? What had caused Lía to act this way? What did the strange vibes coming from this gaol earlier have to do with everything? None of the squads he managed to find that accompanied Lía knew exactly what happened. They'd all been engaged in battles with the inmates when they sensed her's and the Gillian's reiatsu's skyrocket and the rest is history. Any of the normal hollows close to Lía or even in that sub-division of the gaol probably perished in the blast. So much elites, just gone! So many questions still not answered. This lack of info would not do! First, he had gotten no further updates on the status of former squad #336 Los Tranquilizantes, let alone the data and transcript of what transpired with the humans they encountered, and now multiple other mysteries! Well enough was enough!

Xodri had no sentient Gillian and was the only adjuchas with only mindless ones. With no other authority present, Zoréno had left Segunda Cárcel under control of most of his Sentient Gillian that had accompanied him from Dispatch. Summoning the adjuchas once more by bursting with an assigned wavelength of spiritual pressure, he rushed to El Centro, carrying the still unconscious Lía. Quickly he got there, rushing past the sparring grounds, the squad barracks and plaza, to get to the very center; a plateau in front of La Basurinera's underground entrance. And that's when he saw them from the above tree branch he had landed on.

Standing around the plateau, forming a semi-circle were three adjuchas. To his immediate left was a female that seemed aesthetically marsupial. Essentially a complete macropod leaning more to the looks of a fearsome prehistoric kangaroo complete with claws, fangs and a long tail. Despite this, she was also mixed with some influence of a modern day red kangaroo; its hide being the same color as one for on example. Appearing as sort of a hybrid of two different, yet related organisms seemed bizarre. But the trademark feature being the marsupial pouch only highlighted another key point; the small joey-hollow inside of it. This infant creature's looks were more dominated by the docile aesthetics of a red _tree_-kangaroo. It had essentially a dichotomy from the looks of its apparent 'mother'. Both hollows wore nearly matching face-framing masks with calligraphic/"aboriginal"-esque red markings. The 'mother's' mask had more markings which were sharp and broad angled while the joey's mask had less markings which were rounded and curved. Said occupant of the pouch seemed to be sound-asleep with light audible snores.

To Zoréno's immediate right was a hulking stocky mass of what looked to be a body literally composed of basaltic rock with variously sized sky-blue crystalline structures protruding off his body; mainly from his back and neck along with forearms and elbows. The structures seemed to function as rudimentary hand and feet protrusions as well. His simple white circular mask was hardly noteworthy besides its igneous rocky texture. What _was _noteworthy though was that crystalline structures seemed to have an aura of steam about them.

In the middle of the two, sitting in her same makeshift tall chair with long legs crossed was Celvia Lenoir herself. Her chin rested on her interlocked hands before she stood up at Zoréno's arrival. At about the same height as Abdul, she was very slender, but not stick-skinny like a stereotyped runway model, but instead with healthy toned muscle. Even as a hollow, with her soothing grayish-lavender skin, she had powerful poise and a refined beauty to her. Her striking mask could be compared to those of masquerade balls and had symmetrical horizontal swooshes at the cheeks which emphasized the bulges present in those areas that simulated cheek bones.

"You call yet another summoning and yet you're the last to arrive. Distasteful Zoréno," commented Celvia in her mezzo-soprano voice without even looking up at her addressee.

"Tch! Really though, now is hardly the time for your diva attitude Celvia!" shouted Zoréno, jumping from the tree branch and landing in the middle of the semi-circle formation of the three adjuchas. Upon his landing he dropped Lía to the ground with a light thud.

Celvia was visibly shocked at the abrupt situation changer.

" Lía! Lía—Wha-What happened to you? What happened to her? ! Zoréno! Why don't you explain what's _really _going on? Tell us now," said Celvia regaining composure at the end. She said it all while refusing to look up from the fallen avian adjuchas with the concern of a guardian or older sister. While it was true that Zoréno had sent reports from Segunda Cárcel during the cleanup that he had subdued Xodri's Gillian, had the squads locking the prisoners back up, _and_ that he had to restrain Lía to do so, it still seemed that she had went through a war zone. This came along with such a catastrophe happening at the gaol and all the other strange vibes and happenings…So she looked up at the intellectual arrow-headed adjuchas who always seemed to have all the details, all the answers. Even since the 'beginning' he had always been that way. The other two adjuchas looked on at Zoréno with similar concerns, before he himself finally spoke up with a sigh.

"It's simple. She's the one who caused that blast!" stated Zoréno as if letting out a big reveal.

"That much is obvious Zoréno! We all felt her do it. It was you who were too busy _napping_ in Dispatch that you didn't sense everything correctly as it happened!" came the gravelly voice of the male rock-bodied adjuchas.

At this Zoréno pinched the nose bridge of his mask. "Díañolo, trust me when I say that I know firsthand that you all sensed exactly what happened while I didn't. I'm trying to say that the question is 'why?' What would make Lía do such a thing?" he said removing his fingers from his nose bridge.

"When I first arrived on the scene with my some of my Gillian, I saw that she had all the Gillian charging up another mass 'Lluvia Sangrienta' attack. She was incoherent and out of her mind. She wouldn't listen to anything my sentient Gillian or I said, and it was almost as if she was grieving or…crying. Unfortunately I had to resort to knocking her out," explained Zoréno before his voice took on an annoyed tone.

"Man, seriously though, I'm pretty sure my messengers told all this to you already along with all my other status updates over the past two hours. So just _why_ are you guys asking such redundant questions again? What we _really _need is Lía to wake up, and that's why I called this summoning so all of us can directly hear it from the primary source face-to-face rather than by messenger which is apparently an ineffective method," said Zoréno looking away with sarcasm.

"Zoréno, chill out for a second and listen. If you hadn't brushed off Díañolo, you would've realized that he made a point. We don't need Lía to know who's behind this. It's obviously Tarragó! While patiently waiting for your 'grand arrival' to the meeting you yourself called, we discussed it together, and we all agree that we felt his reiatsu rise at the same time we felt Xodri's fall, but after that, both of their reiatsus disappeared."

"What? Are you trying to say Tarragó escaped? That's impossible. No hollow can possibly escape any of the gaols! Let alone 'Los Seis Pilares' itself. Even so, those 'conclusions' of yours are only vague details and thus 'inconclusive'. The fact that I located neither of them and no reports of them by either squads or prisoners alike says something!"

"Zory, it's like Celvia said, stop getting so worked up. It's not like you. We understand you're confused. I do especially. I mean—didn't I tell you before how we both were 'the nosy ones' of the group? We both always have to know everything right then and there, but for this we have to be patient," responded the contralto maternal voice of the marsupial adjuchas as she continued.

"Think for a second and realize it's you who's jumping to conclusions. 'No hollow can possibly escape?' Did we not just have the biggest and only mass prison riot in the history of this base, let alone La Pirámide itself?"

"And yet you got my point anyhow right? It's that both Xodri and Tarragó are still at large. And it's not even about them either. The humans that my Gillian placed in the cell near Tarragó's are also missing," admitted Zoréno to the shock of the others.

"Could they have been destroyed in the blast or even in the riots?" questioned a mortified Celvia in a near gasp.

"No. Of all the three gaol subsections, that one was the least damaged from the blast, and what's more, while the human's cell simply had its barrier broken, Tarragó's cell was completely destroyed and blown back out it's constraints by a completely separate attack," explained Zoréno.

"It's strange, but when I first saw the humans on my loading platform back in Dispatch, I could feel their power, but their souls were obviously over-exerted. But walking around their cell and the gaol itself as I had all the squads and Xodri's Gillian doing reconstruction, I felt vague traces of _their _reiatsu—and the girl's in particular at every surviving cell that had broken barriers. Not to mention that the ones with her reiatsu traces that were broken had all been broken in the exact same way. But what really got me was Lía—Look!" he said turning her over on her back with is foot, revealing his true point to the revolted horror of the other adjuchas.

"Her mask has been sliced by something on the side there! And just sense the reiatsu around it! It's the same as the girl's once again. And I should have realized this sooner, but looking back on it right now, I realize Celvia that um, your uh, your 'Squad #336: Los Tranquilizantes' was it?" continued Zoréno getting visibly further into his revelation.

"They were lathered and coated in both the girl's _and _the boy's reiatsus!"

"It's THEM! So they're the weird vibes I kept feeling right after our first summoning this morning! The vibes we all felt coming from the gaol you guys! They're what subdued the spiritual pressures of the inmates before Tarragó did. Only after I felt Xodri's and Tarragó's pressures drop did I even vaguely realize the vibes were reiatsu, but all the chaos made me lose my train of thought!" said Celvia having the epiphany as right as she spoke each word.

"Hey! Just hold on a second there Cel! Didn't you have the Basurinera staff inject them with that biostasis serum that headquarters sent us to start our human harvesting operations? What-I mean did we get a bad batch or something or were they just strong enough to tank it _and _free all the prisoners single-handedly? No-that can't be because we used that stuff on the shinigami too!" argued Diañolo.

Truthfully everyone almost had forgotten about Ashido. Out of all the other high profile catches he had been the first at the beginning of the week of course. With being the first 'special catch', 'special' precaution had been taken in isolating his 'specially' built cell from the other inmates. Catching Abdul had been the formation and thus continuation of a streak, while obtaining the two humans had been on purpose/accident with extreme short notice.

"Well for one thing Díañolo, if anything, the humans only somehow caused the riot in their subdivision which then spread to the other two subdivisions rather than freeing every last prisoner like you just said." Zoréno stated this yet wondered why he had also felt Orihime's reiatsu in yet another subdivision other than her own.

"And secondly, by your logic of 'the humans freeing the prisoners', it means that along with taking into account the proximity of their cells, if Tarragó was involved in any way like you all believe him to, that _they _were then the ones who most likely freed him. And now they're all missing. Xodri, Tarragó, the humans, even the shinigami…"

"H-huh?" came Celvia's choked voice first before the other's reactions.

"What? !"

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

"Darn it Zoréno! You should've told us that exact sentence from the very beginning instead of drawing it out you moron! Not to mention you didn't send an account of how many of my elite squads are even STILL ALIVE!" said Celvia managing to get in a coherent response.

At this Zoréno simply sighed as if nonplussed.

"Fortunately it seems most of the elite squads were in other subdivisions than Lía at zero hour when the explosion happened, and I had them all helping out Xodri and I's Gillian with construction and re-securing of the gaol. They should be finished any moment now, and one of my Gillian will come to report so. Then the squads can come back here to get re-accounted for. I thought you of all people would understand priorities-first Celvia. And besides, it's hard enough for me to be the bearer of bad news, let along just spewing it all out at the beginning without any lead-up and explanation for foundation. You need to tell heavy news like this in increments or else it'll never get explained the right way. I wish I didn't have to tell it at al-

"S-SHUT UP!"

A chorus of "Lía's!" went off in unison at the avian adjuchas's apparent sudden awakening followed by her gagging coughs.

"! What?" came the response of Zoréno who hadn't participated in the shocked reaction chorus.

"I said shut-up!" said Lía struggling to get up off her back, but was helped up by Celvia and the marsupial adjuchas against her will.

"Don't whine about stupid things that don't matter! 'Hard enough to be the bearer of bad news'? Stop being a pushover for once! Nothing you said-none of it is bad news at all! In fact…it's great news! It means the ones who killed Xodrito are still alive for me to kill myself!" declared Lía with ferocity while what she said sunk into her audience.

"Ki-killed? Xodri? !" stuttered Díañolo. He was saying the two words, but the meaning of them didn't really connect in his mind. They might as well had been just two random words.

"Xodri's dead! ?" questioned the marsupial mother hollow in a whisper as if she had learned of the death of her own child.

"Impossible!" said Zoréno in horror.

"You GUYS! Can't you hear! Don't you _dare _make me repeat-!" shouted Lía swinging her arms and talons wildly before a svelte arm stopped her forward arm in its tracks. Celvia had sonído'ed the small distance up to the flailing Lia.

She somehow had stayed coolheaded throughout all of this as she bored into the eyes of the couple inches taller Lía.

"I won't tell you to calm down. That would be an insult. Instead, tell us who did it. Who _exactly_ are the people you call 'the ones'?"

Lía now becoming calmer realized the gravity of the situation, as said gravity dragged her down into an abyss of mental macabre.

_"They...They don't know? They don't know what happened? What happened to Squad # 203, Los Víboras Hiper? I sent them to report everything to-," _thought the avian adjuchas before she remembered her uncontrollable tantrum and what she had caused her to do.

_"Oh no…what…what have I done? ? !" _she thought, sinking to the ground and clutching her head in despair only to wince in unfathomable pain at gripping her mask wound and revolt in disgust at accidentally touching her blood caked human hair, but mainly at touching the foreign human skin underneath. Her fellow adjuchas looked away in mental dread and horror a seeing such a scene.

"It was…it was Tarragó! He..he ate him" she said with her voice breaking on the last sentence, managing to strain out the last word from her squatting position. Before anyone could react she made sure to answer Celvia's question of who exactly "the ones" were completely; Abdul Tarragó was but an individual person after all.

"And he had some little helpers too!," she continued in disgust to her captive listeners. She explained how she arrived at the gaol crushing the prisoners at the entrance with only reiatsu alone while subjugating then present Gillian, and ordered the squads to split up between the three subdivisions of the gaol. Quickly, she went into one of the subdivisions herself and confronted what she had just picked up from her pesquisa that turned out to be a certain Abdul and Ashido. But the two were quickly followed by back-up of Orihime and Chad as if they had all been working together. She got to how her mask was the sliced by something she couldn't understand and that her ensuing combined _Lluvia Sangrienta and Negación Cárcel_ attacks with the Gillian and hollow squads had been fired only for the shinigami to do some flashy technique and when the smoke cleared-,

"…-They were gone!" she finished looking up at all her friends from her now fetal sitting position as her story ended.

Celvia took this all in. "Hmm. Sounds like some kind of…," she said before her eyes narrowed behind her mask, "Kidō Spell," she finished, to the reactions of everyone else. They had heard of the so called 'shinigami magic', but never seen it firsthand. "And a very good one at that," remarked Celvia again.

"But Celvia, aren't you hearing this? She says they're all actually working together! Is it just me or do I not find that scum Tarragó to be the gregarious type? Him working with anybody, or _anything_; it doesn't add up," reasoned the mother adjuchas.

"But then again Klarradi, neither do humans who are spiritually aware, can defeat hollows, break out of unbreakable glass, and as you said before, 'apparently orchestrate the only prisoner misconduct in our history. Not just our base, but La Pirámide itself'," admitted Celvia looking down remorsefully.

The full gravity of the situation now fell on Zoréno like it had with Lía before.

"You guys," he began in a pitiable whisper before going into a normal voice. "This! This is a disaster! We have the most successful week ever and in a mere few hours we go from being practically the poster child base to _the _very example of failure! We've go to finish damage control right now and make sure Piramidión doesn't get wind of-"

SLAP!

All looked shocked at Lía's abrupt clawed-slapping attack on Zoréno. None of them had ever attacked each other. Even Celvia the great mediator was speechless. How had things escalated this far?

"YOU! Who cares about idiotic glory? !" questioned Lía who was now doing what can only be described as aggressive sobbing.

"Xodri is _dead_! _Dead_! _**DEAD**_! And you wanna know? You wanna know WHAT ELSE! ?" screamed Lía raising her spiritual pressure before her voice became scarily sinister.

"Who cares about Piramidión or La Pirámide itself? Because Xodrito—he never liked it…He never LIKED that we gave into these people,"

"Lía wait up a seco-!" interjected Celvia only to be interjected in return.

"HE WISHED we'd never gotten involved in any of this,!" she said now breaking down into individual sobs, "That we all could've just stayed together, forever roaming the desert like we used to. But I didn't listen. None of us did. And now we're actually too worried about _stupid _headquarters to realize we have to hunt down the ones responsible!"

"Lía," began Zoréno in an even tone making sure not to sound patronizing while helping the avian adjuchas up out of her sitting position. Surprising, she submitted to the larger hollow's help.

"It's surprising, but I think Celvia is actually going to agree with me for once when I say your emotions are getting in the way of your words again like they always do," he continued to Lía's pitiable reaction.

"Just listen," he went on in the same tone as Lía looked up with vulnerable yet defensive eyes, "Make no mistake. They've lost their gracious privilege of shipping and all that comes with it. So now we **will** hunt these monsters down, and we **will **eat them," continued Zoréno trying to console his shattered friend.

At this Celvia and Klarradi came in lending their own healing touches.

"We all cared about Xodri. Aren't we all famil—Hey Diañolo! Quit trying to hide and get in on this," said Celvia turning to the adjuchas only to hear a gruff grunt of the rocky hollow in return as he walked in lending his own touch.

"Wasn't hiding,' was all he responded.

"Y-you guys!" chirped the still emotionally broken Lía objecting from the mass consoling out of some form of embarrassment.  
><em><br>"_Like I said Lía, we call cared about Xodri. And regardless of how you feel about it now, we _all _joined La Pirámide for a reason. Don't let what we've been through or Xodri's sacrifice go be in vain. Because of where we are now, we have a purpose where there wasn't one before and a future where before we weren't quite too sure," finished Celvia.

"Oh, how poetic. So you have class where it counts after all," observed Zoréno off-handedly. Between the two of them, this was his version of a compliment to her as far as Celvia was concerned.

"Nicely said, boss-lady," said Díañolo with a gruff affection.

"Not to mention, we've gotten much stronger than we were before," added Klarradi making a fist.

"You're right! And it won't be long before we…hm. Anyway, enough of that," said Celvia uncomfortably interrupting her words for some reason as everyone backed off of Lía allowing her to stand up completely now_._

"Hey Zoréno," began Celvia nonchalantly, getting the goldenrod adjuchas's attention.

"Do you remember the squad I sent to you on your request?"

"Huh? What….you mean those rookies?"

"Yes, the squad that you gave the responsibility of transferring Squad three-three-six to La Basurinera after their defeat by the humans on our harvesting mission? I just think I might remember you saying you requested a uh….a.. 'transcript' was it?" she asked, raising her voice an octave playfully as if trying to recall the memory with her fingertip on her chin.

This got Zoréno's attention like nothing else. "What the-? You mean there is one after all? ! Celvia, you better not be joking on this or I swear I'll avoid having to talk to you that much more!" It was well known that Zoréno hardly came out of Dispatch. The only reason he hadn't killed that annoying rookie hollow squad after all was because of the daunting task of having to explain things to Celvia who he found even more annoying along with having to request yet another squad. So yeah, this morning had been a miracle for Zoréno's social life as far as Celvia was concerned.

"Hmpf! For your information, the Basurinera staff should give me a status update any moment now. Meanwhile, let's take a page out of your book. You see, the reason I stopped our cute little group hug just now was because you were right when you said we need to 'finish damage control' immediately. So let's do just that, and by 'we', I mean 'you'."

"Hey!" complained the arrow-head masked adjuchas at the turn of events.

"No complaints! I'm being completely serious! Go make sure your Gillian have finished up restoring order in Segunda Cárcel. Then the squads can return here to my sentients and I with any bodies we can dump into La Basurinera. But first and foremost we need Xodri's Gillian to reform their section of the "Menos Fence"! There're four dangerous escaped prisoners most likely on the desert or out in the forest so we need everybody back at their post-!" exclaimed Celvia before getting cut off by an onslaught of spiritual pressure.

_"What the-!"_

_"This reiatsu!"_

_"Could it-!"_

KABOOM!

All five adjuchas jumped backwards up into the air to land on nearby quartz tree branches, barely managing to dodge the sudden sterling silver cero. The blast threw up a huge cover of smoke as four towering figures seemingly sonído'ed into it.

Slowly and suspensefully, the smoke cleared revealing none other than the members of Alma Secta; from left to right: Ashido, Chad, Abdul, and Orihime, all mounted on top of seemingly familiar Gillian Menos Grande with unique masks as their black cloaks that billowed briskly in the wind.

"Yo! 'Los Seis Pilares' was it?" greeted the seemingly jubilant voice of Abdul. "Well I'm issuing a name change! It's called 'Los Cinco Pilares'!"

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started: Mar 11, 7:38 PM est.****  
><strong>**Chapter Finished on paper: Mar 14, 11:00 PM est.****  
><strong>**Chapter Typed: Aug 11th 2:10 PM est.-August 14****th**** 5:24 PM est.****  
><strong>**Revisions: August 14****th**** 8:14 PM est.**

Scroll to the top and check the pre-chapter notes if you missed where I talked about a possible date of hiatus starting next year. **Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.**

* * *

><p>Chapter ends at <strong>8:38 A.M.<strong>

Story Development Trivia: Notice the title of this chapter, and then the title of the mini-arc I revealed back around chapters eight and nine, the "Satellite mini-arc". Originally 'Shooting Down the Satellite' was supposed to be a four chapter series before I learned I had to split chapters up and along with realizing how much longer it would take to fit everything in when fleshing out my notes. But the title, which references a missile shooting a satellite out of space (as sort of a play on the mini-arc title), has managed to survive _as have certain future titles of chapters which will reference the same thing._

The chapter subheader, Mobilization: Target Sighted is sort of like the sequel to Mobilization: 0 in chapter nine. Both Alma Secta and the group of adjuchas mobilized this chapter. There will most likely be a Mobilization 2 in the future. I'm not sure though.

-Because of the mentioned at the end "Menos Fence", now you know why Celvia in chapter eleven and now Zoréno in this chapter both claimed there was no way to escape the base.

-In this chapter, Abdul alluded to the scenario that Los Seis Pilares learned of Ashido's existence by hearing stories and 'folklore' of the local hollows they captured. Apparently, they took it seriously and went on the prove the stories true by locating and capturing Ashido.

-'Xodrito': (You may have seen it in the chapter. It's what Xodri's sister calls him at times. –ito and -ita being sort of suffixes of endearment in Spanish similar to English speakers's habit of adding 'y' or 'ey' at the end of words to sort of turn them into diminutives)

**QUOTE: 1**"Where did we go? Why don't you just think and concentrate about it for a second? You know exactly where," **2 **"She then noticed her Rikka who now all somehow looked like they knew what Abdul was going to say before it was Tsubaki himself who intervened."

-So there we have two separate quotes. The first one is dialogue of Tsubaki and the second is narration. With these quotes, I'm simply continuing to cover my bases...and I'll leave it at that for now.

**QUOTE: **"They had heard of the so called 'shinigami magic', but never seen it firsthand."

- That was narration. And yeah apparently some hollows call Kidō, 'shinigami magic'. In fact, Shrieker(the hollow that Chad and Rukia fought that orchestrated the parakeet incident with Shibata) called it that as well. Still it's noteworthy that Celvia seemed so knowledgeable of "Kidō spells"

**QUOTE:** "The only reason he hadn't killed that annoying rookie hollow squad was the task of having to explain things to Celvia"

-Now you know why Zoréno shuddered at the thought of 'having to talk to that person' in chapter nine. 'That person', was Celvia…if you hadn't figured that out after her introduction in chapter ten. On a side-note: Do you notice that manga and anime love to hint at somebody by calling them 'that person'? ha.

**QUOTE:** "So she looked up at the intellectual arrow-headed adjuchas who always seemed to have all the details, all the answers. Even since the 'beginning' he had always been that way."  
>-This was narration in reference to Zoréno and it hints at something.<p>

**The following two lines were taken out of chapter ten's author's note after I realized something:**

1-(On the topic of the 2nd and 4th Gaols) Both gaols make up the two corners that frame the right side of the rectangular/square shaped base.

2-As Celvia stated in her inner narration this chapter(chapter ten), there are four gaols each at one of the base's corners, making the base a fairly rectangular-square shape. Each Gaol has a warden. Each warden subjugates Gillian.

So you see how I didn't want to reveal the shape of the base or confirm the actual amount of gaols until this chapter (though it was probably obvious)?

Still need a visual aid of this base because my descriptive writing is sub-par? Well here's an equally sub-par visual aid as promised! There's something for everybody.

**i 5 0 dot [t i n y] [p i c] dot [c o m] / 1128oc3 . j p g**

This website doesn't allow you to post full URLs. So, remove all the spaces, brackets, etc and add an actual dot where it says 'dot' both after 'i50' and before 'com' and then you'll have the full URL. As I said in previous chapter's author's notes: 'Expect more visual aids in the future.' You can check out the deviantart link too:

****fc09 dot [deviantart] dot net/ fs71 / i / 2012 / 273 / 6 / 2 / los_seis_pilares_by_p_and_t-d5gdr3x . jpg****

**Key Term Refresher Part 2:****_  
><em>**-'Los Seis Pilares': The name of the base.  
>-'Piramidión' (mentioned in chapter 9 and in chap 9 author's note): It gets mentioned yet again in this chapter.<em><br>_-'La Basurinera' (first mentioned in chapter 9 and explained chap 9 author's note): Mentioned and refered to again. And Celvia mentioned dumping 'bodies' in there if you caught that line in the chapter. If you have forgotten, Celvia is over both El Centro and La Basurinera, and you should've read where there's a underground entrace to La Basurinera right where the five adjuchas were having their little meeting/summit.  
><strong><span>NOTE:<span>**(This is only Part 2 of the "Key Term _Refresher_" series. The actual "Key Terms Part 3"(a follow-up to the "Part 2" seen in chapter eleven's author note) is coming in a later chapter.  
><strong>New Term<strong>  
>-'La Pirámide' (I'm not sure if it was mentioned before this chapter o_0.. have to check): But yes, in this chapter Klarradi is the one to bring it up, and Celvia mentions it again. In all, yet another new term to absorb into this story's jargon.<p>

**Mentioned in chapter OCs Part 3:**

Klarradi and Díañolo: The last two adjuchas have been revealed! Which gaols are they in charge of? What role do they have to play? Stay tuned for more development on them  
><em><br>_


	15. Sectarian Violence

(10/06/12)You remember the pre-chapter note last chapter about a possible hiatus next year? I still need to confirm if it's happening when I said it would. Expect me to update in my profile some time this week. If so, then the story will be up to around chapter 29 before the end of this year(2012)

I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. That is all.****  
><strong>**

* * *

><p>Sectarian Violence<br>-

Shooting Down the Satellite: Missile Fired

**September 10th**

**8:38 A.M. 'Alma Secta' makes its dramatic stage entrance!**

A certain adjuchas was quite pleased with himself.

_"Dramatic epic entrance that catches future lunch off guard? Check! Follow-up opening one-liner? Check! All that's left is the standard balcony speech-"_

"Tarragó-san! I thought we agreed _not _to just attack right after we found them," complained Orihime atop her Menos Grande with the Kesshun trio flying erratically around her.

_"So its come to this," _mentally sighed Abdul before responding.

"And I thought _I_ agreed to just not care after I did it anyway."

"Adjuchas, not helping."

"Shinigami, not caring."

"Hm," grunted Chad finishing the conversational rally.

The group that called themselves Alma Secta had basically crashed the ending of the meeting between the remaining five adjuchas. They'd been one step ahead of their all-hollow targets after all. Now facing them from the quartz tree branches a little ways back, the adjuchas quintet took in the sudden appearance of the quartet; octet if you included the four familiar Gillian they rode in on.

_"What the- that's Calibol and Dámian, and even...!," _shouted Zoréno mentally at realizing four of his sentient Gillian had been subjugated by Abdul himself.

And now all four escaped prisoners had basically merrily rode them here from Segunda Cárcel. But how did they so easily locate himself and the others? Zoréno instantly went into different case-scenarios. Well the shinigami and Tarragó probably could've recognized their pressures! Most likely it was all of them picking up on Lía's spiritual pressure as she raised it in anger earlier, thus it would be the most familiar to them having just ran into her two hours ago. Tch! What exactly was the timeline of events between all of their escapes, the riots, their confronting of Lía, and now appearing here? He had to know!

"Y-You see? ! It's them! I told you! See for yourselves! They're all working together!" shouted the soprano voice of Lía, pointing accusationally at Alma Secta after finally regaining her composure from the shock.

"You fool Tarragó! You dare to show your face again? We were about to finish securing the base and re-mobilize to track you down, but all you've managed to do is save us the time to find you!" shouted Zoréno.

"I'm no a hollow expert, but shouldn't it be 'you dare to show your mask again?'" questioned Lily slyly out the side of her mouth to Hinagiku who of course had a response.

"Hollows are fallen human souls, so they still use colloquial human expressions?" offered Hinagiku to Lily who wasn't buying it at all. Who cares, hollows don't make any sense anyway. Tsubaki seemed to have voiced a similar sentiment in the past.

"Actually," came the mask wearing Ashido jumping off his Gillian onto a nearby tree branch as his teammates did the same.

"It's more like _we_ found _you_. It's nice that you were all in one spot just like we planned. Things are made that much simpler, and I'm sure like your friend said, you feel the same way," finished Ashido, speaking towards all the enemy adjuchas besides Zoréno at the end. Finally he was getting to see all the adjuchas sans Xodri, 'face to face' in a better position than he had before when he'd been captured.

The five adjuchas visibly bristled at the shinigami's abrupt jumping off of Calibol and speaking. Seeing a human-like body wearing a mask was still very disturbing to them. They had indeed heard the rumors from the local hollows they captured of the 'terrible shinigami';

_"He slays hollows with glee! As a shinigami, it was what he lived for of course, his purpose for existing!"_ And his finishing move? Oh this was the best part(besides the fact that he actually _had_ a finishing move)!. _"While the hollow was barely left alive, to finish them off he sadistically slowly rips the hollow's mask off with his bare hands to add it to his collection like a trophy; sometimes taking entire days just to halfway rip it off, relishing in the screams of the poor defenseless hollow. And right before they died, the shinigami wouldn't just let them disperse into spirit particles in piece? No! He takes out his death sword, the zanpakutō! To slay them thus take away their power, devolve them back into pluses, and send them to the some 'Soul Society' with other plus souls where they wouldn't even have memory of themselves? NO! EVEN WORSE! He could somehow purposely send a hollow to Hell itself! He was a monster! A monst-!"_

Stupid local bumpkin hollows and their folklore. Still, the fact that it was so widespread meant they had to at least check it out. What was the origin of the rumor? As the representative base of this area, it was their job to figure out the history and 'geography' of their surroundings. There were hollows among the squads whose very job was that after all. And what do you know, it turns out some of the squads out on random local missions eventually claimed they caught a glimpse of the cryptid shinigami as well. Locating this being was a work in progress. Slowly, they came to recognize his spiritual pressure and eventually over time, the reconnaissance teams and special solo scouts tracked him down to his dwelling place without his realizing it. As far as he knew, the highly organized squads and solo scouts were just normal hollows of the forest after all.

And so with precaution all six of the adjuchas went with their Gillian to confront this terror shinigami only to realize he was engaged in combat with other adjuchas away from his dwelling place! This would not do. After finding him, they realized fighting him was a last resort, and snuck up on him instead to shoot the biostasis needles into him. It wasn't cowardly at all in their opinion, but instead it was smart. There's no such thing as honor, the victor is the last one standing. Unfortunately the shinigami had killed all the other adjuchas and the last one he was about to kill before they showed up had been too injured to be of services other than digestion for the six of them. All in all, that day was a good day.

And what do you know, barely over a day later, once again, scouts on others mission reported back about noticing a certain Abdul Tarragó's existence. Same formula. Confirm his whereabouts with unassuming soldiers and scouts, extrapolate his future path, and confront with full guns blazing. Even though Abdul had also been weakened, they saw potential in him not just to eat him like their previous adjuchas meal, yet he refused their offerings, so he got defeated and his arm devoured. Still, being their first adjuchas victim left alive, they had wanted to give him the privilege of shipping. Perhaps they saw themselves in him, being a desert roamer like they had all once been. So into Segunda Cárcel he went, for the earliest shipment out of the base to headquarters.

Speaking of headquarters, they had given Dispatch a new range of coordinates on that very same day. Apparently, they had a hunch that this area of the human world had 'potential for high amounts of extraction'. Whatever that was supposed to mean. Human souls were all the same. Powerless. Nonetheless, headquarters had shipped them their supplies to start human harvesting operations as a base the previous month. Apparently they had been seen as capable, and with the shinigami and Abdul under their belts that creed would only rise. So with the mission fervently planned during that past month and Dispatch finalizing the coordinates from the range given to them, elite squad #336 was chosen to go and raid the any human settlements and bring their catch back to the base; it all seemed set. Yet they somehow are defeated before obtaining any humans, and needed to be negación'ed at that, ironically accidentally catching actual humans in the beam. Furthermore, the very beings that had defeated them!

So what was the record now? Shinigami under biostasis, injured and armless adjuchas, two spiritually aware humans with unique powers under biostasis. All ready for shipping along with a full house of hollow inmates. Things had been looking so up, it wasn't even funny.

Yet here was that same formerly broken and batted adjuchas right in front of them WITH the shinigami, WITH the two humans. What had been looking up had now been turned on it's side at best.

Celvia was in full-on interpretation mode. "_Tarragó's intents are obvious, but the other three don't seem to have any killing intent at all...despite what that girl apparently did to Lía's mask,_" observed Celvia. Besides Zoréno and probably Xodri, this was the first time either of them had seen the two humans. Just like the shinigami, they turned out to not be as scary as they sounded. Eyesight was the great denominator.

_"In that case, let's see where this goes,"_ concluded Celvia as she spoke.

"And just what is it shinigami, that's been made so much simpler, besides us being all in one spot like you say," she questioned. She wanted to know what the others, besides Abdul really wanted. Her curiosity made Orihime grateful.

_"Oh good! They're the type to 'ask questions before shooting'. I was worried we'd have to fight the moment we found them," _she thought.

"Don't worry, he wasn't talking about fighting! He meant that it's easier to ask you some questions we've all been having. As in why were we all captured and where exactly were we being sent? What are you doing in the human world looking for random souls? What's the point of it all? What's it all meant to accomplish?" said Orihime rattling off each question with concern.

The five adjuchas simply looked at the girl, then at themselves, then back again before Celvia answered in her articulate voice.

"Sorry dear, but you've sort of lost me at 'you're not talking about fighting'. Disrupting our operations and killing...," she trailed off, "And..and you expect DIPLOMACY? How laughable! The only thing this little rag-tag group of yours deserves is digestion!" she finished, raising her spiritual pressure with rage at the end, cuing her teammates to do the same.

"W-wait! Please hold on a second-!"

"Yeah, what she said! Please _DO _hold the phone!" interrupted Abdul in an agreeing voice but with obviously feigned concern. "I mean, really this might work out after all! I mean, we have so much in common! We both find this situation 'laughable' so that's a common sense of humor. Then there's the 'you deserve digestion' comment. I couldn't be happier you all see things my way!" he shouted with glee raising his reiatsu.

"Now then, which of you are Celvia and Zoréno? ! I want some 'personal diplomacy' with the two of you for devouring my arm!"

Meanwhile Celvia had somehow calmed down at Abdul's words. Frankly, she was unimpressed by his theatrics, including the way they had arrived on the Gillian which was obviously his touch.

"Oh wow. 'We ate your arm'? You were able to make out that much after we caved your mask in? Oh, and Celvia here by the way. Goldenboy to my left is Zoréno," said the amused adjuchas. Perhaps she couldn't take Abdul seriously.

"Don't introduce m-GAAH! You're so impossible...and it's not 'Goldenbo-!" protested Zoréno as he was cut off and ignored.

"It must've been painful to still be awake when we ripped your arm out. How sad that you somehow managed to have some regeneration ability after all. Now you're going to have to go through that pain all over again!" said the seething marsupial-like Klarradi.

"Tch! You idiots need a fact-check badly. Firstly, I can't regenerate, and I never needed to until you people took my arm. I have it back now because I'm just magical like that. Secondly, I wasn't awake for you bastards doing what you did to me. I just forced some random little kid to tell me who did it before I killed and ate him! Not a scrap left!"

"AAAAAAAH!" shouted Lía abruptly launching off her tree branch in a feat of sonído nobody saw coming as she made to puncture Abdul's neck with her talons. He didn't even budge before she hit a golden wall instead, mere centimeters from her target. It all happened so fast that the tension hardened with the soundwave made from the attack.

_"What?" _was all she could think as she rebounded off the shield onto another tree branch, coincidentally catching Orihime's stare at her before Abdul answered.

"Sorry, but we've had this crap planned out for a while now. We knew the possibility would come if you all wanted to fight instead coughing up the answers like good boys and girls. And we knew there were five of you and four of us. Luckily we decided as a 'team' that I get Celvia and Goldenboy," he said, spontaneously adopting Celvia's nickname for Zoréno, "While everyone else gets the remaining three of you."

"W-What do you think this is? Some kind of tournament match-up bracket? ! I don't care what you have _planned_! I'm ripping you apart!" retorted the avian adjuchas, charging at Abdul again only to dodge a sudden armored punch by a retaliatory Chad jumping in from the side as they both landed on new lower tree branches.

"Unfortunately, it's not up to you. It's already been decided by 'us'," said Chad laying down the law.

BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ! The remaining four adjuchas instantly appeared next to Lía defensively, taking in Chad's transformed arm and higher reiatsu.

_"They're fast!"_ he remarked mentally, gripping his arm.

"'Decided as a team', 'It's already been decided by us'? You have some nerve coming here like you did like you own the place," said Zoréno pensively as he raised his reiatsu to re-subjugate, thus free his sentient Gillian from Abdul's control. With a _certain_ wavelength of spiritual pressure from him they all wordlessly sonído'd out of there in unison to places unknown.

"Just who do you think you are?" he continued.

"'Think'?" questioned Chad.

"We _are _Alma Secta," declared Orihime from her tree branch above.

"Alma what? !" questioned basaltic Diañolo getting fed up.

"Hey Mr. Pebble, you'd better remember that name because you and your friends are gonna need somebody besides yourselves to point fingers at when you report to your 'headquarters' just who trashed this place!" shouted Abdul.

"Oh..oh my how precious! They actually named themselves...like a bunch of ego-tripping fools! _Our _names actually have purpose! Don't you dare mock us!" shouted Klarradi, hopping off the tree branch towards Chad with a punch that he matched. The collision of fists caused visible impact waves that startled Orihime.

At this, Abdul silently sonído'd down right next to Celvia on the tree branch with all the adjuchas on it as if it was the most casual thing to do. He couldn't have been more aloof about it.

At this, Zoréno and Diañolo instantly pounced to his sides, and with Celvia as well they now surrounded him. The goldenrod primate adjuchas wasted no time going on the offensive only for his fist to be slashed by gazelle-masked Ashido who had flashed in out of nowhere. The victim of the slash, then made a retaliatory swipe at the shinigami who dodged it with ease in real-time, landing next to Abdul.

Suddenly the soul-reaper was ducking from a backhand punch from his supposed teammate. "HEY! Shinigami! What do you think you're doing? ! Stay out of my fight! You did that on purpose and you know the monkey's mine! Go fight Rocky over there or something, I mean come on! I get that you just _have_ to be around me for some reason, but we'll fight after this! But know that it won't be a spar! I only fight 'for keeps' if you get what I mean."

"'Fight _later_'? It's hard to agree to that offer after you already swung at me just _now_ adjuchas," said Ashido raising his so called death sword at said navy blue/indigo adjuchas.

"Hey, you don't have to agree at all. It was only a suggestion!" shouted Abdul as the two teammates made to clash in the midst of their opponents.

Lía saw this coming and took advantage of it. Sneaking under everyone by jumping from down to the branch directly below and rushing to length of it, she meant to jump back up again to the branch above where Abdul and Ashido were about to collide fisticuffs...er well Ashido has a sword, but you get the point. The thing is, right as she was about to jump off the branch with sonído to attack, she realized that..she suddenly couldn't.

_"I can-..I can't move!" _strained the avian adjuchas actually managing to roll her head back in exertion before through her upside-down vision she saw something that chilled her spine. Still up in the original higher branch she had jumped on from off the sentient Menos Grande was Orihime pointing at her with her middle finger and index finger aligned.

Incantationless Bakudō #1: Sai.

In those brief two seconds Ashido and Abdul stopped mid-motion as they then noticed Lía's rapid motions below them only to see her begin motionlessly straining before she stopped all together and looked up backwards. They followed her eyes to see the cause, as did the remaining adjuchas on the branch and Chad and Klarradi on their own branch.

All alone from above, Orihime saw over what was quickly turning into a battle royale.

"You all shouldn't just leave me all alone up here. You're all so interested in Tarragó-san when I'm the one who let him out in the first place. I'm the one who caused the prison riots. Kanō-san was let out because of me. And now when we returned together, Kanō-san hid our presence with kidō and Tarragó-san took the Gillian, while I let out some smore prisoners again. In the end everything is because of me, and yet you all want Tarragó-san. Somebody you already defeated before."

One could here the obligatory objection of Abdul after that particular end comment.

"Especially you," she said looking at Lía even more directly now while still pointing at her with determination, "Because Tarragó-san, he wasn't the one who chipped your mask," she finished.

_"So it's like I thought,"_ thought Zoréno with dread.

But before Zoréno even could think that thought and as soon as that last syllable left her mouth, Orihime found herself on the receiving end of a garnet cero. Briskly she sidestepped as the missed cero exploded against the tree trunk behind her. Putting up Santen Kesshun to take the brunt of the recoil, one could see the silhouette of the garnet explosion behind her fusing ethereally with the golden-yellow glow of the shield. Apparently, you don't need movement of your limbs to fire a cero; especially when it's from your mouth. It was when Lía broke out of her self-made head-rolled-back position and suddenly spun her body around that everyone realized she'd simply been stringing them along and had long since shaken off Orihime's kidō from the very beginning. Even at the spell's best it hadn't performed its job at all, only merely holding her in place and she had still initially managed to roll her head back anyways.

Suddenly the avian adjuchas sonido'd up to her, but Orihime saw this coming and back-stepped into Santen Kesshun merging into it and used a sort of Nijū Eishō (two-fold incantation) to use incantationless Shō and the full kotodama for the shield, rocketing up backwards towards the canopy. Her pursuer gave chase with haste.

All the other adjuchas actually made to go after them as well, but the remaining Alma Sectans had other plans.

Chad grabbed the much larger Klarradi's arm before she could make the jump after the avian adjuchas.

"Sorry, but looks like we're stuck together!" he yelled swinging and releasing her one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction courtesy of his right arm, and chasing after her aerially careening form.

Meanwhile, Ashido and Abdul flashed and buzzed in, in front of their respective opponents, Diañolo, Zoréno, and Celvia, distracting them from trying to follow in concern after their comrade.

"And uh..heh...just _where_ do you people think _you're_ going? The party's right here! You don't think birdy can handle herself against the little human girl?" taunted Abdul.

_"Hmm. I can't tell whether he actually has faith in Inoue-san or not or if he doesn't even care at all and only wants his reve__nge against those two,"_ thought Ashido before mentally sighing, _"But that's just this adjuchas for you. Simple, yet complicated," _he remarked mentally again before making sort of an announcement.

"Adjuchas, I'm leaving so I don't injure you with my fighting."

This perked Abdul's interest as he looked back at the gazelle-masked being as if sarcastically raising an eyebrow.

"_Oh_? Well it's good to know you appreciate my well-being shinigami. Ya know, for a while there I thought you'd decapitate me from behind or something at any time. Plus with you out of the way it makes things easier for me; not that I would've held back for your sake anyways. You could say the feeling's _not _mutual," he joked.

"Well as long as you're somewhat grateful," responded Ashido with stoicism as he began backing away to the new ire of Zoréno.

"You still think you can decide how things are going to go as if you're writing this script? And just where exactly do _you_ plan on going," said Zoréno throwing Abdul's quote back at him. "If _we're_ not going anywhere than neither are you-!" FLASH!

Ashido purposely shunpo'd right in Zoréno's face, silencing him out of shock before flashing to his right to align with Diañolo. In less than a second he outstretched his zanpakutō arm revealing familiar bandage-like tassels that immediately spun around he and Diañolo faster and faster in a dome shape before a flash of sudden light appeared and the two combatants had completely disappeared. It all happened centimeters from Zoréno who barely had time to react, let alone the teleported Diañolo.

To Zoréno's left, Celvia barely had time to comprehend the situation either before she found herself sonído-tackled off the tree branch by an outstretched arm with the larger Zoréno hit by a different arm as Abdul double-lariated them both into the dark sinkhole entrance of the mysterious La Basurinera below.

El Centro and it's facilities and forest were quiet for a while. Silence prevailed.

And yet, there was a rumbling in the distance.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started: Mar 14th 2012 11:00 P.M.  
>Chapter Finished written on paper: (cont to next chapter)<br>Chapter Finished typed: August 15th, 10:39 P.M.  
>Revisions: August 16th, 11:44 A.M.-September 30th 2012 7:29 PM est.-May 11 2013 8:55 PM pst<strong>

The chapter title "Sectarian Violence" is sort of a play on the team name Alma Secta. And I assume you all actually know what sectarian violence is. And the subtitle Shooting Down the Satellite: Missile Fired? Refer to last chapter's author note for explanation of that.

I originally was going to have the start of the first two fights in this chapter since they are so short, but decided to add it to the next chapter instead. I literally _just__  
><em>made this decision. Luckily, since these two fight openers that I've pushed to next chapter are so short, they doesn't disrupt my planned amount of chapters or the theme of the next chapter at all. The title is key.

**QUOTE:** With a _certain_ wavelength of spiritual pressure from him they all wordlessly sonído'd out of there in unison to places unknown.  
>-Narration, and yes; "places unknown".<p>

**QUOTE:** There were hollows among the squads whose very job was that after all.  
>-This was narration as well. And yes, it's their job. You will understand these quotes when the time comes to bring them back up.<p>

Next: Chapter 16: "[?-?-?] [?-?-?-?-?-?-?]"

I still need to confirm the exact date in January the story will go on hiatus. Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.


	16. The Stomach

**(10/14/12)**You remember the pre-chapter note last chapter about a possible hiatus next year? It's taking longer than I thought to find out the exact date that it's happening. I still need to confirm if it's happening when I said it would. If so, then the story will be up to around chapter 29 before the end of this year(2012). I'll update my profile whenever I get the news.

Chapter is unbeta'd. I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. That is all.

* * *

><p>The Stomach<br>-

Trilogy Genesis

**September 10th**

**8:42:58 A.M. Chad and "Klarradi" begin their bout in earnest.**

Klarradi aerially reoriented herself after getting swung away by Chad, jumping horizontally off a quartz tree trunk to the branch of another quartz tree below before looking up at her human opponent.

"You say 'we're stuck together' boy? Well in that case it's time to pry you off of me," said Klarradi in her contralto voice. She sounded like a woman in her late 30s.

Chad was simply silent in response. _"She looks like some kind of mutated or prehistoric kangaroo creature. And what's with the one in her pouch? It's a hollow too but..," _thought Chad looking at the snoozing joey hollow.

"You actually matched my half-hearted punch earlier. That's very impressive," she said as if nodding her head and crossing her arms. Then she actually did cross her arms. "First let me introduce myself before you think I don't have any manners. My name is Klarradi Tamoyo, warden of Primera Cárcel(Spanish for: 1st Gaol), the largest gaol within all of 'Los Seis Pilares'. Now what's your story?"

"Yasutora Sado," was all Chad responded.

_"Oh, don't tell me this boy has clammed up on me. And he seemed to be such the big talker earlier. Maybe I should try a different_ approach," thought the marsupial adjuchas. She really did share her attribute of curiosity with Zoréno.

"Alright 'Yasutora Sado'. Tell me, how can a mere human like yourself get such power? I'm curious, really," asked still interested Klarradi emphatically before she noticed Chad stiffen.

"Hm. Well I see why you're confused. You're surprised that I, a 'mere human' matched your 'half-hearted punch'. Well you should know I also half-heartedly matched it in return. Get it out of your mind that there's anything 'mere' about humans. And you asked 'what's my story'? I believe we had the floor first. So why don't you answer our questions and then I'll answer yours. This doesn't have to escalate into some grand battle unless you make it that way."

_"Hmm. At least that got him to finally open up, for the moment anyways. It's not like he's suddenly a socialite. He's like a rubber band. You can easily stretch him, but then, POP! He contracts right back to normal length."_

"Ah, it's alright, I've decided that I've changed my mind! I don't need to know anything else. Once we destroy you and the others you'll have never existed in the first place and this bad dream will be over. The forgotten are the true deceased," she declared causing Chad to get apprehensive. "And don't try to spin it saying that since I didn't want to talk, that I'm suddenly 'the aggressor'. You see, it's just that," she paused before her demeanor became one of motherly doting as she looked down in her pouch.

"My little baby here has never had human before. He's picky, but maybe I can finally get him to eat something different besides the low level junk La Basurinera coughs up. And besides, you say 'there's nothing mere about humans' as if you're some typical human. You and your friend are exceptional; you've both obviously risen past normal mortality. So however disappointing it is that you didn't comply as a prisoner, there's still definitely some _alternative use _for you!" she shouted sonído-hoping over to Chad's branch.

Chad jumped away to the side at the last second before she lands. With the human boy only coming up to her thighs, instantly upon landing she hopped into a double-side kick to smash the him into the quartz trunk. But Chad side-stepped and grabbed her ankle, keeping her body almost horizontally in the kick position as her free leg fell to the ground. But ever-efficient Klarradi not one to lose balance so easily, used her long kangaroo-like tail to keep herself up, despite Chad having a a fickle momentary hold of one of her ankles.

Chad saw her reorienting coming, and before she easily overpowered his human left arm's grip he powered up his right arm with an energy blast, aiming across the adjuchas's body straight to her face-framing mask.

Right as his punching motion nearly completed, he saw the blur of Klarradi's own right arm to his left side do a full complete punch. Her arm was too short to reach him as it fully outstretched and yet he still felt a full impact right to his face, blasting him away as his energy blast flew off his arm and into Klarradi's chest, missing it's mark yet sending her flying as well. Both combatants were displaced from the branch they both were on before, landing each a branch away in opposite directions.

_"W-what was that? ! First his arm starts glowing with that strange energy, then his punch didn't even connect but the energy actually launches off of his arm? !"_ thought Klarradi clutching her bosom with both hands in shock.

_"Her punch didn't hit me I'm sure of it! But her arm moved so fast, maybe it did hit me? ! Hm. She looks pretty shocked from my attack too. Well then," _thought Chad, trailing off as he gripped his right arm.

_"I guess the only way to find out his powers," _thought Klarradi as she and Chad abruptly made to jump back to their original branch.

_"IS BY ATTACKING!" _thought both jumping fighters in unison as their fists made a impact-wave forming collision above the branch in mid-air.

**Elsewhere  
>A minute earlier<strong>  
><strong>8:42 A.M.<strong>

A spiraling dome of tassel-bandages unraveled in a flash as the two beings that had been within it landed across from each other on separate quartz tree branches.

Of the two, there was a basaltic adjuchas with sky blue crystalline appendages that had and aura of steam about them. He actually seemed nonplussed at his abrupt transportation.

_"Hmm. This area. It's the Menos Forest far from the left of the side of the base..more like to the north, but not above Klarradi's gaol,..."_ observed the adjuchas Díañolo before speaking up.

"So I take it that's the little trick you used to escape Lía's attack at Xodri's gaol earlier. What an annoying technique, we're tons of miles away from the base," he grumbled while still looking around.

_"He both over-exaggerates the distance and uses the wrong unit of measure. Or does he not realize,"_ began gazelle-masked Ashido in his head drawing his zanpakutō, _"That we're still only seconds away from the base." _

Díañolo noticed Ashido's silence and actions, remembering the rumors he'd heard of the shinigami.

"Ha! You've got these local hollows spooked, but you don't look that tough! Tell me, is it really like whatever you said to that weakling Tarragó just now that it's 'cause 'your power is too dangerous' that you brought us out here?" questioned the gravely adjuchas completely ad-libbing the quote out of not remembering the exact dialogue.

Ashido still kept his silence which Díañolo ignored.

"Because if that case, we have a lot in common shinigami!" he shouted raising his reiatsu causing the ever-present aura of steam to compound.

Before Ahsido could take in what the adjuchas had just said, he began feeling pin and needle sensations before a dizzying effect overtook him.

_"Guh! What is this! He raises his spiritual pressure and this happens? Could it be a 'phantom-pain' reiatsu effect?"_ thought Ashido in his mind trying to maintain balance as he shunpo'd backwards. And suddenly, "...Now the feelings gone!" observed Ashido. But before he could make sense of it in that mid-shunpo second, Díañolo was above him with sonído, punching at the tree Ashido was about to land on, as Ashido flashed away right as he landed causing the adjuchas to punch the tree branch instead.

The branch shockingly melted on contact, as Ashido looked back where he jumped from in mid-motion.

_"What the-? I felt it! All that body-heat coming from him all of a sudden. Even though he had steam before it didn't seem like he had _**that**_ level of heat coming from him. And his reiatsu doesn't feel heated either, so it must be his hollow abilit-"_

"Like I'm just gonna let you read me like a book shinigami!" shouted Díañolo now above Ashido's face. He had abruptly sonído'd off the branch right to Ashido and threw a powerful punch. Still mid-motion with no ground beneath him to take the brunt of it, Ashido managed to block the upside-down adjuchas's punch with his zanpakutō in front of his face as a wave of heat overcame his senses.

**Meanwhile  
>8:43.30 A.M<br>**  
>Well it turns out that at some point during his descent, both Abdul and his opponents realized nothing was going to break the fall of Abdul's double-lariat tackle. To Abdul's chagrin, his opponents decided to take advantage of it before his own complete realization.<p>

They rebounded off of him, ricocheting off the walls as they sonído'd further down into the darkness of the collapsed sinkhole chasm. After finally finding his targets and future lunch, for them to just leave without even saying so much as 'goodbye' really annoyed him.

But during the dark endless descent, he realized it wasn't really that dark...it was getting brighter. Lined on the drop's grand circular surrounding walls was fire? No! Torches _lit_ with fire. Green fire! Just like the ones on the way to the shinigami's cell. The fire lit up enough so Abdul could also see ladders and steps descending further down, and going back up to the top.

_"How deep is this thing and who wasted their afternoon digging it?_!" thought an incredulous Abdul before to his shock with no way or indicator, the descent abruptly widened up to an open area as he landed hard on a flat terrain less then a kilometer in diameter. It was so dark, that he wasn't able to see it coming.

It turns out the entire descent had been like the shape of a cone and Abdul was now at its wide-diameter base. Lining the circular walls that surrounded the flat terrain were now giant green fire torches and multiple immense grand doors going all the way around. The doors had to have height of at least small sky-scraper!

"How appropriate," came a mezzo-soprano voice, causing Abdul to snap to its origin, to see Celvia trademarkedly stepping out the shadows*.

"That you choose this particular place to die that is," finished another voice in the opposite direction as Abdul did another whiplash-inducing spin. Primate-like Zoréno ambled towards him, locomotively knuckle-walking. The eerie green lighting seeped into the goldenrod sheen of his hide for a unique color.

"Oh boy, and here I thought I was going to blow this place to kingdom-come to find you two, but here you are right in front of me and finishing each other's sentences at that," remarked Abdul with outstretched hands at the other adjuchas's joint-entrances.

"And I 'chose this particular place'? And just what's so special about this dump?" questioned a smug Abdul. He didn't really care, but might as well get some answers if he could right?

At Abdul's statement and question, Celvia did an unsettling chuckle. "'Here we are' you said? Well here _you _are conveniently asking the question I thought you'd never ask. You seem to have acquainted yourself with this base," said her voice becoming tense, "Even making 'pre-battle matchup plans' before interrupting our meeting," she finished, now more observationally rather than upset.

"Heh! That's right! The girl tried taking credit for everything earlier, but it was I, not her, who did reconnaissance on that Gillian perimeter and pesquisa'ing the wardens and three other gaols," said Abdul purposely leaving out Tsubaki's efforts and in turn without him realizing it, still was Orihime's contribution.

"Tch! Well that makes things simpler, but I'll simplify it even more so even a _simpleton_ like you can comprehend," mocked Zoréno.

"Humor me," responded Abdul dryly, unknowingly at Zoréno's very attempt at humor.

"If you think of our base here of Los Seis Pilares-"

"AHEM!" interjected Abdul, clearing his throat.

"What! ?" questioned his audience in annoyance.`

"I think you mean Los Cinco Pilares," answered Abdul quietly under his breath before looking up, "Huh? What? I didn't say anything. Keep doing your grand explanation thing. I'm all ears," he finished, smugly pointing at his ear holes.

Tick marks collectively formed on Celvia and Zoréno's masks. It wasn't because of his abilities that they held such vitriol towards him. All six of them had effortlessly taken him down before of course. It's just that even back during his beating, he still had smart-aleck comments to say in between every hit he received. It had annoyed them all to no end.

"I was _saying _that if you think of our base of Los Seis Pilares as a 'simple' body, the four gaols and the Menos Fence would be like the skin and the skeleton. Dispatch of which I am in charge of, where squads go before getting sent off on missions could be considered along with Celvia's El Centro, 'the brains'. But El Centro by itself is 'the muscles'. It's where all soldiers and squads are based, and is sort of like the bases's center, 'the heart'. The squad barracks, sparring grounds and even a sort of 'town forum' are there. My sentient Gillian work with those of El Centro to schedule the missions," explained the primate-adjuchas.

"Um, yeah excuse me, but why are you telling me this 'behind the scenes edition' crap?"

"Well now Tarragó, are these not some of the answers you supposedly wanted? And besides," said Zoréno as both he and Celvia began closing in on Abdul.

"We really want to know if whatever your body uses for a brain is capable enough to realize which body parts are missing so far?" taunted the goldenrod adjuchas.

"Hey now, don't make him hurt himself Zoréno. Didn't you say you'd make this simple for him?" questioned Celvia in almost genuine yet feigned concern.

"You know for once I agree with you. Fine then. Welcome Tarragó to 'La Basurinera'! The digestive system of Los Seis Pilares!" shouted Zoréno triumphantly.

"Ok...I'll bite. Just what the hell is that even _trying_ to mea-?"

"Tell me," began Celvia interrupting Abdul's deadpan reaction, "How exactly do you think we sustain ourselves as a base? As the sole beacon of structured order in this chaotic forest of savage cannibalism, we must have _some _way of providing sustenance for our soldiers so that we maintain that order right?" questioned Celvia as if she were a teacher asking the class a question.

"Hmm? Now that ya' mention it...!" began Abdul as if in his own genuine interest, "It pretty much never crossed my mind. Must've been all those darn 'savage cannibalistic' thoughts of mine holding me back huh?" began Abdul before he felt Celvia's spiritual pressure rise non-aggresively.

As if in response, all the grand doors that surrounded them began to slowly rise with deafening noise.

"Yes! You're exactly correct Tarragó! Now you're getting it! You see, with something like 'sustainability' always on my mind, we utilized methods learned from being part of La Pirámide so that we would never waste any of our resources. So then for example, the rare soldier that gets injured 'beyond repair' on missions? We don't just let them decompose into spirit particles do we? No, of course not! How wasteful. They instead get fed back into the system to feed their more capable brethren. As for the gaols, don't believe for a second like you probably have from your so-called 'reconnaissance' that we just herded random local hollows back to our base and locked them up. Oh no, you see getting shipped is a **privilege**. Only the best quality 'goods' get shipped to headquarters being La Pirámide itself. So what about those who _don't _make the cut?" continued Celvia as the gigantic rising doors finally began coming to a stop.

"I'm sure you didn't go to the desert judging by your 'scoping' out of the base, so I take it instead that your so called 'Alma Secta' group enjoyed your little field trip in the Menos Forest. Tell us now, did it seem a little quiet to you?" finished Celvia as the doors loudly locked in place, the green torches now casting their eerie glow on the contents.

Abdul's eyes truly widened at the spectacle as the echoes of the door's ascents finishing their reverberations .

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started:  
>Chapter Finished written on paper: (cont to next chapter)<br>Chapter Finished typed: August 19th 2012 6:13 PM est.  
>Revisions: NA**

Next: Chapter 17: [?-?-?] [?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?]

*Celvia has a tendency to be shrouded in shadows; even in the chapter she was first introduced.

The chapters are becoming briefer, but the length will fluctuate from chapter to chapter of course. As mentioned last author note, I Added Chad and Ashido's fight openers to this chapter instead of last chapter where I originally had them. So it actually would've been 1,000+ less words if I hadn't done that.

The chapter subtitle, 'Trilogy Genesis'refers to the starting of "round one" of the fights. And we saw three separate fight starts this chapter.

Quote: "Oh no, you see getting shipped is a **privilege**. Only the best quality 'goods' get shipped to headquarters being La Pirámide itself."

-That's a pretty important quote. Not just that that the assumption that all local hollows were just hoarded into the cells was wrong, but that shipping is considered a privilege and only the best quality 'goods' get shipped. And 'La Pirámide' was mentioned last chapter, but now 'headquarters' has been _directly_ called La Pirámide. Though it was obvious enough last chapter.

Again, this chapter is unbeta'd. Call out my grammatical mistakes or if you feel something doesn't read right.

I still need to confirm the exact date in January or whenever it is next year that the story will go on hiatus. Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.


	17. The Mockingbird

****(10/21/12)****You remember the pre-chapter note last chapter and the ones before that about a possible hiatus next year around January? It's finally been confirmed. Since last year and this year, for a while now I've known a period of time would come where I'd be away from the computer for a period of about 2+ months(emphasis on the likely '+'). I just never knew when the exact date would fall, but now I can confirm the window of time. I just didn't want to confirm until I had exact dates. So now I can say that a hiatus will start Jan 8th, 2013. Basically the week of January 6th since I update on weekends. And as promised, since this is now confirmed, the story _will_ be up to around chapter 29 before the end of this year(2012).**  
><strong>This chapter has been brought to you by the interrobang (!?) which this website at last finally supports.  
>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.<p>

* * *

><p>The Mockingbird<br>-

Molting

**September 10th**

**8:43.52 A.M. But what became of Orihime and her pursuer?**

Lía was currently in hot pursuit of the thing she hated the most in the world at the moment; Orihime Inoue. The adjuchas's rage continuously built in front of her ebony beak before being shot forward incarnate as a garnet cero.

_"Perfect!" _thought Orihime. This hollow was too blinded by rage to even shoot straight, so Orihime had managed to go to the same shallow spot in the canopy a little ways off from Segunda Cárcel that Abdul and Chad had blasted earlier in order to get to and from the desert. Dodging the garnet cero with a jerk to the side on Santen Kesshun, the ensuing explosion briefly opened up a hole above as she flew up it on her shield back to the barren landscape frozen in twilight; landing atop a modestly sized dune.

But the moment she landed, the dune erupted in garnet light! A shocked Orihime flew up in the air, barely managing to escape being consumed in the monochromatic garnet energy as she looked back down in confusion at the now familiar sinking sand filling the hole she had flown up from only to suddenly be violently bludgeoned in the back of her head, sending her careening back to the ground.

"How stupid do you think I am!? That I'd follow you up that hole?!" shouted the voice of the avian adjuchas.

Before Orihime could reorient herself she got backhanded with enough force to actually break her feet's bond with the shield which then shattered in return as she tumbled across the desert sand only to roll on top of a foot. Everything was happening so fast, Orihime couldn't even comprehend enough to be shocked at her opponent's sudden rally of speed.

"You were miffed everyone besides you was fighting earlier and tried draw attention to yourself, making it sound like you were the 'big-bad mastermind' even though it was Tarragó who actually killed and ate my little brother! You—you're just a distraction!" she shouted with realization, beginning to lifting Orihime up on her foot, "A small-fry runt of the litter distraction just so that Tarragó can fight who he wants! No! I won't allow it, and I won't allow you to waste any more of my time!" she shouted now lobbing Orihime up into the air with force as one would lob-kick a soccer ball.

_"Sinfonía Acústica!"_ _(Spanish for: 'Acoustic Symphony')_

The next thing Orihime felt was pain, surrounding her very being; continuous blows that forcefully made her continue her initial lobbing into the air. And yet all she could make out was the static buzzing of sonído ensnaring her like a bee's nest. The buzzing sounded strangely melodic. Unable to make out or even see her attacker during the constant instantaneous barrage, all she could do was raise her reiatsu defensively before the decisive round of aerial pummeling began. Almost immediately following that instinctual decision, a hard impact came down on her shoulder blade, destroying her momentum and sending her in the opposite direction, slamming into the desert floor unmercifully, landing on said shoulder blade and forcing sand up. The entire exchange had been about three seconds.

Lía landed lightly a tennis court's length away. "And that's that!" she said making to locate the shallow area again to blast back down to the forest when she heard some shuffling.

_"Hmm?" _she turned around only to see a sight that surprised her.

_"No way she should be getting up after after what she just went through. She—she shouldn't even be moving!" _Yet here the girl was on her knees, supporting her upper body with her good arm since her other shoulder blade was now out of commission.

The brief but battering barrage had already totaled Orihme's clothes. Her softball raglan t-shirt with ½ length navy blue sleeves and a white torso had been deeply raked by talons at the entire torso-midriff section and was now revealing pale flesh painted with contrasting dripping dark blood. The black performance spandex-like material under the t-shirt that reached to her wrists had been split on the left sleeve. Her matching blue shorts along with the black compression shorts underneath that went down to her knees were ripped on the right side. More importantly were the bodily bruises she had received all over her body. Her apparently broken collarbone had the most noticeable of bruises. It reminded the Orihime of the one's Sora had put on her leg and other areas as a hollow a couple months ago.

Yet what shocked Lía the most was when the girl rose her face up to look at her. The girl was daintily smirking with a tired expression as blood drained out her mouth. It was quite unsettling morale-wise from a psychological point of view, even though Lía herself seemed to be in control of the situation.

"Looks like I knocked a few screws loose on this one. What's so funny?!" asked the avian adjuchas in an attempt to subconsciously regain full mental dominance over the situation.

Orihime panted in return before answering. "That you were expecting...something like _that _to discourage me. Hey you guys, I know you got on me for saying it before, but I have to say it again. It hurt a lot more when Sado-kun punched me in our sparring. Nothing's come close to hurting me that much since then," began Orihime as she seemed to start talking to no one in particular.

"Have you really lost it? Who are you even talking to?" as the ebony-beaked adjuchas now in genuine confusion, before noticing three creatures begin to fly rhythmically around the human girl.

A silence was held as if the girl was thinking much about her response.

"Myself actually," she said with her same dainty smirk as Lily, Hinagiku, and Baigon now flew around her in a torrent as marigold reiatsu began to build up around her.

_"She's building up spiritual pressure, but it's so unfocused,.." _tensely observed Lía. "Tch, you really _did_ get some brain damage after all didn't you? Oh well, I'll just put you out of your sad misery right now," stated Lía as she gave off spiritual waves indicating she was about to start generating the familiar garnet energy in front of her mask on demand.

The indicative spiritual waves and the first sight of fledgling garnet sort of put Orihime in a hypnotic daze. "Eh? A cero huh?" she said airily as she began to think out loud. "I've been wondering for a while now you guys," she said, shifting off her knees and sitting down properly while still using her good arm for support, "Since we've been learning more about reiryoku and kidō, it just seems like ceros are only concentrated beams of energy; pure expression of raw reiryoku right? Vesus kidō which shapes and molds the raw reiryoku into different spells. It just makes me think," she began as her support hand on the sand began glowing, "Didn't I do something just like this on accident during my training with Hachi-sensei?*"

"What are you mumbling about?! Shut up and die already!" shouted Lía making to fire her almost finished cero when suddenly she felt a small fleshy hand press up against her lower abdomen. Orihime with a new focused expression was there looking up at her with good arm outstretched, its hand glowing brighter with marigold energy while the other arm lay limp at her side.

"Sorry, but I sort of promised my friends 'dying' is what I wouldn't do." As soon as the syllable left her tongue, the marigold energy ballooned into a nearly uncontrollable golden beam, completely encompassing it's target as it rocketed into the sky diagonally. This uncontrollable nature of the beam severely caught the girl off guard as the energy completely flooded out of her as if someone had turned on a high pressure tap faucet. The beam was nearly finished firing as Orihime heard a soprano voice behind her that made her eyes nearly widen out their sockets.

**"Well it's bad to make promises you can't keep," **was all the girl heard from behind as a cero finished charging before firing a few feet above her horizontally, near the end of Orihime's diagonal "mock-cero".

As both blasts finished firing, Orihime was frozen for a moment, arm still upwardly outstretched before the voice began again. "So you have some speed in you after all? But I saw every step. Was that your first time doing that? I mean, it was like you were tip-toeing while tripping with every step while trying to sneak up on someone who was watching your every move to begin with. If he's still alive after this, I'll make sure to tell the shinigami that he should've spent more time teaching you that horrible rendition of 'shunpo'; no matter how bad shunpo is compared to sonído in the first place," explained Lía as Orihime finally came to her senses by turning around and jumping away on an on-the-spot formed Santen Kesshun.

"Oh, and speaking of sonído, how did you like my 'Modo de Sonído Engañosa #1: 'Eco' '("Way of Deceptive Sound #1: 'Echo'"), just now? I can use it to reflect any of my movements. So if I'm coming at you from the left which a punch? Suddenly right before I hit you, I'm coming at you from the right instead, and you have no time to dodge. But then again, that's also the reason I wasn't able to re-aim my cero at you at the last second. Oh well. It's actually pretty basic stuff. Even the failure excuse of 'elite hollows' you managed to easily** beat in the human world this morning knew such techniques."

Orihime could only think how she never saw Fátima do anything like her current opponent just did despite the bladed hollow's speed during their fight earlier.

Lía watched as Orihime dispelled her shield, and her three creatures flew back around her.

"And speaking of 'reflecting movements', I think I finally understand you. You're a little copycat—no, a mockingbird! First you try to match my speed, then you try to copy my cero just now, and now you're trying to steal the one thing that makes me unique!" continued the adjuchas before her voice darkened.

**"Subordinates."**

"Wh-what are you talking about?" was all Orihime could muster to answer, now fully feeling the effects of her previous battering.

"I know it's hard for someone like you, but don't act stupid! I'm talking about those _things_ flying around you that you keep making into a barrier. It finally clicked to me that they are the one's you meant when you said you were 'talking to yourself' earlier. And again, I'm not an idiot! They're what you used to slice my mask aren't they!?" she shouted enraged, raising her reiatsu to fever pitch now as it became a visible garnet for the first time before her soprano voice took on a more smug sinister tone.

"Well that makes it more interesting to stay around here instead of going right after Tarragó or even killing you off mercifully like I was gonna do. What was I even thinking? Death for you right now is a privilege! Because it's...lIKe I sAaiD-guh!," she said straining now while rising her pressure as feathers actually began dropping off of her as if she was diseased, revealing an actual all-skeletal structure beneath.

Orihime's eyes widened in horror as she saw what she realized where hundreds or maybe thousands of glowing garnet blinking beady eyes with writhing bodies tightly confined within the darkness of her apparent cage-like skeleton as more feather's finished dropping.

"It's like I said," continued Lía now with more composure,"I have some 'subordinates' of me own!" she finished pulling at the center of her rib-cage which readily opened as the creatures, literally burst at the (skeletal) seams from her chest cavity and flew around her.

Orihime and the Kesshun trio Rikka out of their flight form could only put on incredibly bewildered faces at the sight they were seeing.

"Every hollow prides themselves of their unique ability! In my case it's my '**Bandada de Aves Rapaz**' ("Flock of raptor", lit: "Flock of birds of prey")!

The hundreds or maybe thousands of wildly flying creatures were now visibly avian, as they all stabilized into the flight pattern of a giant tornado, rushing along with the torrent of Lía's visible garnet rieatsu. They now flew together with swarm behavior and intimidating cries that creepily sounded like bird cries mixed in with traditional hollow cries.

"Now then," began Lía pointing at her target," It doesn't matter, what relationship you have with your three creatures. Because between both I and my flock, all of you are nothing more than prey!"

At this, the 'flock' all made unanimous sonic booms as they sharply changed direction and did hunting stoops towards already battered Orihime and the Kesshun trio.

This was going to be a tough one.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started:(cont from last chapter)  
>Chapter Finished on paper:(cont to next chapter)<br>Chapter Typed: August 21, 2012. Morning-2:09 PM est.  
>Revisions: October 21th, 2012. Morning-10:07 AM est.<strong>

*See 'Training with Hachi-sensei part 3' in Omake/side-story section of chapter eight. I didn't just pull what Orihime did this chapter out of nowhere.  
>**All the adjuchas still think Orihime and Chad beat Squad #336 without getting injured at all, because Orihime healed herself and Chad at the end of that fight. This is why Zoréno was so shocked upon seeing them on his loading platform in chapter nine and knowing the implications.<p>

-_Aaaand Round One of the fights is complete. It's a cycle that will go like this until completion: **Chad-Ashido-Abdul-Orihime**._

-If you forgot, when Orihime says she "promised her friends she won't die," she's referring to chapter nine.  
>-Her usage of shunpo will be delved into and further explained later.<p>

So yes, Orihime is 'the mockingbird' and the chapter's namesake. The chapter sub-title, Molting refers to how Lía's feathers fell off.

Hopefully now you understand the namesake of 'Lía Halconero'. Halconero means 'Falconer' in Spanish. A 'falconer' is someone who makes use of a trained bird of prey or 'raptor', to hunt game. And Lía basically has a whole flock of raptor; thus her surname. And also, I didn't just randomly pick 'falconer' as her surname because of that and just translate it to Spanish. The thing is 'Falconer', is an actual surname in real-life, so everything fit perfectly and turned out better than expected. And before you point to her brother and ask 'what about him?' Xodri Halconero, her brother, if you recall was also bird-like in appearance with his beak, but he had a more insect theme going on as well which I'll touch on in later author notes. Everything is connected.

Extra note about Lía: Do you guys get that she's a bird hollow...that's also basically a makeshift bird cage? lol

A "hunting stoop" which is a term I used at the end of the chapter, is apparently when a bird of prey dives in for the kill. I'm actually learning new terminology writing this stuff.

New Techs/Abilities revealed:

Sinfonía Acústica (Spanish for: 'Acoustic Symphony')  
>'Bandada de Aves Rapaz' ("Flock of raptor", lit: "Flock of birds of prey")<p>

* * *

><p>Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.<p> 


	18. Roaring Fist of the Tiger

(10/28/12)As you know from my profile and the last pre-chapter notes, hiatus starts Jan 8th, 2013, the week of Jan 6th.  
>Now let Round Two of the fights commence!<br>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. That is all.

* * *

><p>Roaring Fist of the Tiger<br>-

Vocalizations

**September 10th**

**8:44.00 A.M. The bout ruled by hand-to-hand combat continues!**

Both Chad and Klarradi disengaged from their previous impact-wave forming fisticuffs, landing back on separate tree branches once more. Chad'd had enough of the redundancy at this point as he charged up another energy blast. Something wasn't right, and whatever she had done when she somehow managed to land a hit on him just now was irking him in the back of his mind. Quickly he charged up another energy blast.

"I'm woman enough to admit that weird blast of yours completely caught me off guard earlier. But it looked like you saw a _ghost_ after what I did to you," teased Klarradi in her contralto voice. Despite the fact that she _was_ technically a 'ghost', Chad didn't like her jeering about the topic he still didn't understand.

_"No. No matter how fast that punch was, there's no way it hit me without my realizing. So why again, was I still punched?!" _Even after he decided the only way to find out her power was by attacking, he'd now regressed mentally back to that same agonizing question.

"I'll be honest Yasutora Sado," began Klarradi snapping Chad out of his thoughts, "I'm a very curious person and you're very interesting, but still I'm not the type to draw things out. Let's end this quickly," she finished as she got into a stance.

"I was thinking the same thing," replied Chad as the bluish-white energy on his hand and got brighter.

"Well now, I guess that's another similarity between us," proudly responded Klarradi.

"Another?"

"I don't have any flashy energy blasts like you, but what I do have is sort of the same principle," began the marsupial adjuchas.

"Here's another thing about me: 'I'm not the chatty type!'" yelled Chad as he jumped off his branch, energy blast pre-charged.

Klarradi didn't budge this time. "The thing is, your fists are powerful. It's like they're roaring whenever they're surrounded in that energy," she explained as Chad aerially closed in on her.

"OOAOAAAAAH!" shouted the attacking boy as he made to pull back his arm in preparation to punch.

"But my fists,"

"HAAAAH!" His punch was thrown.

"MY FISTS SCREAM!" finished Klarradi, throwing a couple fast punches at the last second which formed shockwaves that actually contested the blast until it phased around her and extinguished eight meters back.

"Incredible," whispered Klarradi steaming from the attack.

**"Twenty-nine and a quarter punches and I still couldn't nullify it completely,"**

_"It phased around her like nothing! Wait, what..did she say? Twenty-nine punches?! But I barely saw two...!" _thought Chad in alarm as he jumped back to a different branch after landing right in front of Klarradi.

"But she still took some damage though, but just barely," thought Chad observing the now fading steam from her being, _"But to think she can actually nullify my blasts, let alone that range. So I was punched earlier after all but who knows how many times I actually got hit,"_

"Get the picture now? This is the 'other similarity between us'. With my **Gritandos Puños**(Screaming Fists), I can use the shockwaves from the speed of my punches as an extension of myself to hit you without even having to make physical contact; similar to how you did the same to me with your energy attack back when you grabbed my tail. Earlier when we first clashed fists before everybody split into their own fights and the other times after that, I wasn't even using this ability. It wasn't until I punched you earlier and demonstrated how useless your energy attacks are against me that I brought it out to play with."

At this quip, Chad charged up another one of said 'useless energy attacks'.

"Even so, your shockwaves aren't really that strong if it took twenty-nine-plus punches to only weaken and not even completely cancel out a blast that wasn't even full power," revealed Chad.

But Klarradi was ready in earnest, "But on the flip-side, who said _I_ was even punching even close to 'full power' myself up to now, let alone even punching with _both arms_?" she asked with a smile in her voice.

Chad's eyes widened in realization as he made to fire the energy blast from his branch.

"Too late," said the sing-song maternal voice, as he felt an extreme point-blank impact(s) to his face, blasting him off the tree branch, spinning as he crashed into the ground; his stray energy blast launching up into the air in it's inevitable death spiral upon hitting the canopy and snuffing out.

Klarradi had at some point sonído'd further up the path of his landing, as before he could even get back up, he felt himself getting hit with a barrage of impacts.

"You see," she began, punching furiously with her left arm while her right palm rested against her holed chest as if ironically speaking from the heart, "While your punches are incredibly powerful and your energy blasts even more so, your attacks are too sturdy and slow. Meanwhile, my punches are average strength, but I can increase their strength just by increasing punching speed and even more so secondly with my shock-waves once I go fast enough," said Klarradi still absentmindedly pummeling her foe with said shock-waves.

"So you have to be wondering. What happens if my shock-wave punches where to actually _physically_ hit you and I actually used _both arms_ after all? And you know what? Why not just throw in doing all that with _full power _as well?" finished Klarradi with her right hand now on the bottom of her face-framing mask as if in deep contemplation before her curiosity finally got the better of her.

"Let's find out!" she shouted sonído'ing to Chad with both arms cocked back.

_"Puñetazo Cuerna_(Antler Punch)_!" _she thought punching down to the ground on Chad's back with such force that it created a crater in the ground and actually caused a pinching effect of him in between her fists and the ground so that he flew out from in between them as a result, flying back-first into the trunk of a tree creating another impact crater across the diameter of the seemingly inorganic perennial quartz plant*.

"I'll keep my promise of not dragging out the fight boy. This is it for you," said Klarradi with finality charging up a cero in front of her mask that was actually rich brown in hue, matching her own body color. The joey in her pouch slightly stirred mid-slumber at this.

Chad seemed to have just managed to come to right as a wave of brown overtook him, strangely in slow motion right at the end.

A loud explosion rang out through El Centro.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started:(cont from last chapter)  
>Chapter Finished on paper:(cont to next chapter)<br>Chapter Typed: August 21st, 2012 4:41 P.M. est.  
>Revisions: September 15th 7:36 P.M. est, Oct 26th 8:48 A.M. est.<strong>

*Definition of a tree: A perennial woody plant. And a tree is also organic. Quartz trees look dead and inorganic, thus the description, 'inorganic perennial quartz plant'.

With this chapter, round two of the fights is now commencing. The chapter subtitle Vocalizations refers to the 'screaming' and 'roaring' attributes that have been put on Klarradi and Chad's punching.

New abilities/techniques used and or revealed:

-Gritandos Puños(Screaming Fists): Klarradi's hollow ability.

-Puñetazo Cuerna(Antler Punch): Technique using both arms to do shockwave inducing punches combined with actual physical impact and at full strength.

* * *

><p>(1028/12)As you know from my profile and the last pre-chapter notes, hiatus starts Jan 8th, 2013, the week of Jan 6th.  
>Check my profile for updates to the story's status, chapter release dates, etc.<p> 


	19. Melting Bone

By now you've long since known about when the hiatus will start. If not, check my profile. There are more details there as well.  
>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.<p>

* * *

><p>Melting Bone<br>-

**September 10th**

**8:43.30 A.M. Just what is Díañolo's ability!?**

Well basically after countless years of fighting hollows, Ashido was in full on analytical mode. Shunpo'ing out the torrent of heat after blocking with his zanpakutō, he landed nearby on a tree branch as his opponent did the same and looked at him.

_"I don't get it...usually when spiritual pressure is used psychologically against an enemy in battle, it's usually used to 'instill fear', 'to stun', for 'complete paralysis', or for 'phantom pain'. But that needling sensation I felt on my skin...I mean, it must've been phantom pain, but his pressure isn't effecting me any other way besides the dizziness earlier. The thing is, his pressure isn't effecting me any other way at all, and it's weird since 'phantom pain' is usually a package deal with one of the other effects like 'instilling fear'. So just what do I classify it as? And then there's the heat generating from his body. His hollow abilit-"_

**CLICK**

_"!...What was that?! A 'click'? I know I just heard a-"_

**CLICK. CLICK. CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK!**

"Aaaaaaah! What is this!?" shouted Ashido clutching his gazelle mask and head in pain.

_"So this is what the big bad monster shinigami acts like in fear," _thought an amused Díañolo before deciding to make his mockery audial.

"Hmph. Already feelin' it are ya'?"

"Guh! If you think you can get to me psyhcologically though spiritual pressure, then you're mistaken!" shouted Ashido defensively raising his reiatsu and regaining his composure.

"What are you even blabbering about shinigami?"

"The three uses of spiritual pressure in battle. Offensive, defensive, and psychological. You're clearly using the latter, but I can't exactly categorize the symptoms. Regardless though, whatever this 'clicking' is I'm hearing inside my head; it only has initial shock value, but it's nothing. The silence of the forest is much more painful," explained Ashido no longer clutching his mask while pointing his weapon accusationally at the basaltic adjuchas.

"Ha! We learn things a little differently around here shinigami. There are only two types of reiatsu, 'Standard, and Elemental'! My reiatsu is in the 'elemental' category. All your 'three uses' have nothing to do with the actual 'reiatsu type'."

Elemental? Sure, Ashido knew what elemental was. That type of reiatsu usually correlated to if the user had nature related power or zanpakutō. The best example Ashido could think of was the fiery heat of the reiatsu that exhumed from Captain Commander Yamamoto himself. His reiatsu was indistinguishable from fire itself! But even if you had an 'elemental' zanpakutō, it didn't automatically correlate to having elemental reiatsu as well. Some elemental zanpakutō wielders just have standard reiatsu. And after all these years, he'd never seen an actual hollow with "elemental" type. But still how was this hollow's reiatsu elemental in the first place? Some pin and needle sensations, dizziness, and clicking were hardly-

"GAAAA-AAAH!" screamed Ashido in sudden pain. It had bolied up on him in less than a second. Literally! It felt like the inside of him was on fire!

"Heh. And now the delayed effect's takin' place," commented cross-armed Díañolo cooly leaning against a quartz tree-trunk.

_"What?!" _was all Ashido could think, but the opponent was gone. Before he could look up he was smashed to the ground from the air, taking the full brunt of the tree-melting heat and partially breaking through the tree branch as a result. Before hitting the ground, he somehow managed to land on his feet and shunpo'd away.

"Hey where'd you go?!" shouted Díañolo to more to himself than to the shinigami.

Ashido was irrationally irritable and in a sweat. His innards still felt aflame and he was barely able to think straight.

"Guh!, he caught me off guard just now, but he can't keep up with my shunpo. And once again the pins and needles sensation is gone once I move away from him; the clicking now as well! But this new burning persists no matter what! He did say earlier 'his ability being dangerous' was something we had in common but-"

As if on cue, a booming voice that reached the entirety of the forest had the answer, 'IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU RUN SHINIGAMI! You're not any safer staying away from just my body like you probably think! As long as you can even _feel_ my spiritual pressure, you're still under the effect of my 'Radiante Presión' ("Radiant Pressure")! My ability is mixed with my spiritual pressure itself!"

_"His reiatsu IS his hollow ability?!" _Ashido was now sorely confused, while now having shunpo'd far away. Yet the adjuchas's voice still easily carried that distance.

"With my 'Radiante Presión', your under a constant barrage of electromagnetic radiation! Microwaves to be specific!"

_"Microwaves?!" _thought the masked shinigami stopping in his tracks and turning around.

"By default, they're at'a lower frequency where they penetrate deep into your tissue where there's barely any nerve endings, thus the 'delayed burnin' effect'! But there's always a way ta' switch things up! If I wanna make you scream right here and now, then I gotta purposely target the _surface_ tissue instead with something a little more specific! I call it,** 'Cero Combinación'**("Combination cero")!"

_"What's he up to now?"_ thought Ashido on the ground before hearing a buzz on a tree branch behind him, _"How did h-!"_

_"Parte Uno: 'Cero Microondas'," _thought the adjuchas as actual clear beam of energy fired from his rocky textured mask.

Still reacting to the adjuchas's sudden speed and unable to even make out the incoming attack which looked like a beam of vague heatwaves, Ashido quickly put up a defense, raising his zanpakutō.

"Bakudō 39: Enkosen!" he shouted with haste as a spinning disk of condensed reiatsu solidified in front of his zanpakutō.

"Ha! Microwaves travel through such thin walls!"

Before Ashido could even make out that last syllable, the top of his skin felt heated, but within an incomprehensibly small amount of time, it felt aflame, matching his burning insides. The mask on his face was now beginning to bubble and crack into white liquid on it's surface.

_"Parte Dos: 'Cero Empíreos' (Spanish for: "Empyrean Cero")," _thought the adjuchas this time as a now sky blue beam followed directly in the path of and immediately after the first Cero finished. It was almost as if the two were one great extended beam with no lag time in between. The blue-ish hue reminded one of blue fire and was the same color of Díañolo's chrystalline appendages.

With no time to dodge or even think about doing so already caught in the first part of the attack, Ashido took the full brunt of the final cero as a heated explosion rang out in the seemingly vacant Menos Forest.

Díañolo smugly looked down at his dirty work as the smoke gradually cleared, but was shocked as it finally did. The shinigami hadn't budged from his spot!

With a now enlarged cracking Enkosen on the tip of his zanpakutō, he had still taken damage from that last attack. His entire body was covered in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree-looking burns. His already tattered shinigami robes from living in the forest for so long were now scorched. His gazelle mask was deformed from it's slight melting in the top right corner, melting over its left eye so that it was unusable as an eye-hole.

"Grrr! Why are you still alive?!"

"Isn't it obvious? Enkosen may not have been able to properly block the first part of the attack, but it sure could block the more traditional second half of it. Especially since I channeled more reiatsu into it and made it larger. Still there's also something different about that last cero. You called the whole attack a 'combination'. Interesting," he said lowering his zanpakutō. His voice signified a return to complete composure.

"Because, I finally get what you meant. The first cero used microwaves to burn me from the _inside-out_ while the second one was more like a normal cero except specialized and superheated to burn me from the _outside-in_. The first one was supposed to penetrate deep to my muscles causing intenral damage, thus immobilizing and stopping me from dodging the second one. I wonder how long it took you when you sat down and planned this all out?" questioned Ashido, getting a gruff growl from Díañolo in response. This shinigami was getting too comfortable!

"Either way, I'm through figuring out your abilities, so watch closely," continued the shinigami gripping his zanpakutō harder as he closed his eyes.

"It's been so long since I've done this, but it's time to show you some abilities of my own," he finished, raising his zanpakutō to the tip of his nose before his eyes slammed open behind his mask.

"Breath, **Kamokuen**!"

* * *

><p><strong>OmakeSide Story:** "Shinigami Academy"

Ashido's cave seems to have been turned into some sort of a television studio set. The gazelle masked shinigami himself is sitting on a stool in the middle.

"3,2,1 We're rolling!" said a cameraman cuing the apparent segment to start.

"Hello readers and viewers. The name is Ashido Kanō and today I'll be explaining reiatsu."

"You see, reiatsu is simply the "force"/"pressure" of a person's 'reiryoku' or spiritual power being released. This is why reiatsu is often called spiritual 'pressure'."

"In battle there are three main uses of reiatsu," said Ashido holding up three fingers, "Let's start with 'defensive'," he continued while adjusting his mask.

"A fighter can use their reiatsu defensively. If the circumstances are neutral, when two attacks collide, the one with the greater spiritual pressure will win out. In this way a fighter can also raise their reiatsu in defense to shield or lessen damage from attacks. Technically, a person with less reiryoku could actually beat a person with more reiryoku if they use more _reitsu_ in battle or during a certain attack. Fights are very circumstantial so it's completely feasible and can lead to some pretty startling upsets with the underdog beating someone favored to win.

Now onto 'offensive' use. Basically, in high enough amounts, spiritual pressure can be dangerous and incredibly lethal to others. A person releasing their max reiatsu amount in a mere second for example would cause lot of damage not only to the owner of the reiatsu, but to their surroundings and any opponents. This is what happens often when kidō spells malfuction. The users were unable to control or stabilize the reiatsu amount being used on the spell, or they couldn't hold the mold that the incantation puts on it. Reiatsu can also be used to power up hakuda or zanjutsu techniques to 'refine' and make them much stronger than usual; such as channeling reiatsu through your zanpakutō or your fists," said Ashido sighing after that mouthful.

And lastly, there's 'psycological' use. This is most commonly used by a being with high reiryoku and reiatsu against a foe with comparatively less of both. It can have different side-effects really. Effects include 'instilling fear' which can be overpowered by pure willpower, 'stunning' which includes making it harder to do basic motor functions to sometimes making one falling on their knees in shock or having the actual wind knocked out of them; 'paralysis' obviously causes somebody to be unable to physically move such as being frozen in place; and lastly 'phantom pain' can make somebody feel like they are being attacked although they aren't. The last one is an example of reiatsu-caused enhanced anxiety really.

Oh, and the reiatsu 'types'. You're either 'standard' like most souls and hollows, or you're 'elemental'. Now if you're elemental, whatever effect it has on your reiatsu, whether it makes it hot, cold, electric, or more, it actually can naturally augment the three main uses of reiatsu themselves. Elementals can take advantage of this and the possibilities are endless depending on how exactly your reiatsu is effected if it is indeed that type.

Well uh...that's pretty much it for now...oh wait," finished Ashido as a hand from off-screen hands him a card, "Hmm? What's this?" asked a perplexed Ashido to the stage-hand who merely shrugged.

He easily opened the double-folded paper only to be greeted by some handwritten text. He read the words mentally and cringed behind his mask at the first line.

_~~~~~~~~  
>"Dear motherF'ing Ashido,<em>

_What exactly do you think you're doing? The story hasn't had an omake since chapter eight, so don't try to bring that garbage back now. The author just used them because he sucked at writing and couldn't explain things properly within the actual chapters! And those things weren't even chapters back then, they were entire novel series's smashed all onto one page! So stop stealing and paraphrasing crap from the Bleach Wikia site and do what we want you to. Explain what the heck "__**Kamokuen" **__is and why does it 'breathe'!? Come on, at least give us a freakin' translation in parenthesis!; brackets even! Why do all the lame Spanish techniques the author made up in five seconds practically get their own English-Spanish dictionary, while the rare Japanese techs get squat?!_

_Sincerely,_  
><em>All the people who read this story and don't leave reviews"<br>~~~~~~~~~_

"Hmm? Well if you think about it, that _was _a review. Particularly scathing though don't you think? And you can't blame the author that at the moment the site doesn't allow Japanese kanji to be posted in stories anymore. Even so I guess he could give the English translati—oh what's that? Oh looks like the author himself is here now and...wants to come on set...no he's sent me...another card..," trailed a sweatdropping Ashido. So many changes to the script! It's a good thing he didn't read that last card out loud.

Apprehensively this time, he took the card from the anxious stage-hand and opened it, greeted by hastily written sloppy writing as if the writer had just finished it two seconds ago.  
>~~~~~~~~~<p>

_"Dear everyone,_

_It's alright, don't fret. Ashido will reveal his power in time. Let's just bask in the completion of another chapter you know?_

_In the meanwhile, let's go back to La Basurinera next chapter to see guess what? Not Ashido's zanpakutō that's what! Ha! Take that anons!"_

_Oh and uh, sincerely,_  
><em>The loving author,"<em>

P.S. I know what it is and you do not. That is all.  
>~~~~~~~~~~<p>

Slowly the masked shinigami folded the note and placed it with the other one. Perhaps the author wasn't completely over the first letter.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started:(cont from last chapter)  
>Chapter Finished on paper:(cont to next chapter)<br>Chapter Typed: August 21st- August 22nd, 12:00 P.M.  
>Revisions: August 22 1:53 PM, November 4, 8:33 AM, 2012<strong>

About the omake, technically if you remember the cycle I posted last Author Note, you should figure out what chapter you'll see Ashido again. And not only were the writers of the first letter now part of the dreaded omakes since Ashido read it on air, but also if you hadn't noticed, after chapter eight I sort of turned the Author's Note(AN) sections into Author's Novel(still AN) sections so that there was no need for omakes to provide explanations for things. I added one this chapter just to explain the reiatsu types, but the 'letter from anons' idea literally came out of nowhere.

All of the stuff that happened to Ashido this chapter are the side effects of various types of microwave burns.

New techniques/abilities used or revealed this chapter:

-'Radiante Presión' (Spanish for: "Radiant Pressure"): His hollow ability.

- 'Cero combinación': 'Cero Microondas' (Spanish for: "Microwave Cero"), 'Cero Empíreos' (Spanish for: "Empyrean Cero")


	20. Erupción

I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.

* * *

><p>Erupción<br>-

Metamorphosis

**September 10th**

**8:49 A.M. What did the eerie green-fire torches cast their light upon!?**

_"Tell us now, did it seem a little quiet to you?"_

Those defining words of Celvia had rang out through 'La Basurinera' as Abdul took in the new vistas behind the raised grand doors that encircled their terrain. Piles of hollow carcasses lay in mini-mountain-sized heaps. Some piles seemed to be structured and organized, but death seemed to be the same sight behind all the skyscraper sized doors.

"Soooooo let me get this straight! You freaks had your little squads beat up the local populace, put the strong ones—or ones that fit whatever your 'standards' are into the four gaols to get 'shipped' to 'headquarters',"continued Abdul making air quotes, "While the rest of the garbage got dumped in this well...dump to feed the rest of the base?" he finished before starting up again.

"Um here's the thing; for all that talk about 'sustainability' you did earlier, wiping out an entire population without replacement hardly seems 'ecological'. Especially for finding food in the future."

"But that's the best part!" piped up Zoréno breaking his brief silence. Love for the technicalities of issues were what he was known for.

"You see, the genius of our setup is that we've actually hardly made a dent in the surrounding forest population. There are simply not hollows dumb enough to come near the reiatsu our base gives off. Local hollows only make but a small of what you see here, and any locals that do end up here are easily replaced with new hollows meandering into the area! There's the small few amount of squad members who end up here because of their incompetence, treachery, or weakness as Celvia said before," said Zoréno thinking about Squad 336, the hollows defeated by Orihime and Chad in the living world earlier that morning.

"There's probably even some dead animal hollows in here from when we first started, but the majority of the sustenance you see here has been shipped from headquarters or even other 'locations' over time," continued the simian adjuchas. Abdul didn't notice just how he said 'locations'.

"So you prefer 'imported' food instead of 'local'. So what?...Wait, what do you mean 'over time'?"

"I'm saying this is 'surplus', or emergency reserves. What, did you really think we fed an entire base off of solely normal hollows? It would be far too much constant strain on resources! Just think for a second Tarragó; how long do you think a small slice of a mindless Gillian's fingertip can sustain you average hollow squad?"

Abdul's eyes widened at this.

"Days? Weeks? Months even? The answer is 'all of the above', relative to the individual hollow's strength level of course!" finished Zoréno with a declarative voice before Celvia picked up the tab.

"A small sliver here and there, the Gillian don't really care," explained a lax Celvia rather poetically, "They're mindless anyhow and fingertips actually grow back over time. Not that that's the reason we use them, it's just a coincidence. Besides, it doesn't always have to be a slice from there specifically anyways. As for the mindless Gillian themselves, all you have to do is keep them above what we like to call 'the starving point'. For the squads and sentient Gillian we do better than that, but that's just the bare minimum requirement across the board for everyone. In the end, what feeds our soldiers is a relative mixture of everything in La Basurinera into appropriately sized 'rations' based on the strength of each soldier or collective squad; the bulk of it coming from mindless Gillian. It's a lot of work, but that's what the Basurinera staff are here for," she said gesturing now to the sentient Gillian and other hollows coming out and walking among the heaps of cadavers.

"And it's why the facility is connected to El Centro itself. It's um...sort of like the vague, unclear body analogy Zoréno tried using earlier," commented Celvia raising her slender finger in the air as if she had realized something.

"Hey!" protested Zoréno before Celvia continued her point.

"No really Zoréno, El Centro, the 'muscles' depend on nutrients from La Basurinera, the 'stomach and digestive system' to survive. Thus both areas work hand in hand along with the rest of the base," said Celvia finally finishing with hand gestures only to be followed up by a repetitive sound.

CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP CLAP! You know who was clapping obnoxiously fast, "Cool story, nice presentation, et cetera, et cetera, but I couldn't help but wonder why exactly you're showing the starving and frankly angry adjuchas your secret stash of food. Then I remembered my old motto, 'Eat first, regret that you didn't ask questions later," said Abdul buzzing away with sonído and appearing behind Celvia.

With no remorse, he violently thrust his palm through her back before she could even comprehend.

"That's it?" questioned Abdul aloud before Celvia's body began buzzing like a static image. Her head hauntingly did a full three hundred sixty degree turn before staring Abdul right in the eyes as the situation dawned on him while she spoke simple words.

"**'Modo de Sonído Engañosa # 2: Estático'"**("Way of Deceptive Sound #2: Static")

_"An afterimage! I forgot these guys have so much annoying tricks," _he thought, remembering his confrontation on the desert. But before he could recompose himself he heard a disembodied voice.

**"Primero Rueda de Color de Ruido, Parte 1:"**(Primary Color Wheel of Noise, Part 1)

"'Parte' what?!" yelled Abdul before he was met with a whipping kick from one of Celvia's long svelte legs, sending him flying into the air at a sharp 50° incline.

"Ruido Violeta (Violet Noise)!" yelled Celvia in completion before sonído'ing high in the air in an attempt to intercept Abdul's approaching trajectory. _"Parte 2: Ruido Rosa(Pink Noise)!"_she thought as she kicked him down as a 150° incline towards one of the doors. Before he could even get halfway towards the ascended door she was gone and he heard her disembodied voice once more, almost in a whisper.

"Parte 3:,"

At this he tried to reorient himself, but the speed at which he was flying prevented him from doing so. And besides, as soon as he got the thought, he sensed something.

"Ruido Rojo," she stated buzzing into existence as her foot basically stomp-implanted into Abdul's mask, abruptly changing his momentum as he did a 120° trajectory change, now sailing towards directly towards the ground, but at a slant.

_"Ruido Final:(Final Noise:)," _thought Celvia sonído'ing down and meeting the back of Abdul's neck with a shockwave inducing roundhouse kick, "Blanco(White)! She finished the rally, thrusting Abdul in another abrupt direction change; this time of 180° as he flew almost four-hundred meters on the way right back to where he started. And it wasn't over yet.

Zoréno was there practically pounding his fist in anticipation before he decided to sonído to Abdul midflight in-case the adjuchas regained control of himself.

Interlocking his fingers, he slammed them down as Abdul's profile reached him, smashing the adjuchas headfirst into the ground at an abrupt right angle*.

Instantly Celvia sonído'd next to the larger Zoréno so they were side-by-side.

"Let's finish him off," said Celvia.

"Yeah," answered Zoréno as the two uniformly buzzed backwards to give themselves some space.

Instantly, both fighters charged up ceros. A hot pink-lavender color for Celvia and a goldenrod color for Zoréno as they both fired at the fallen Abdul to an ensuing explosion.

A large impact zone was formed on the flat terrain.

"Something's...not right," said and growingly apprehensive Celvia as the dust cleared.

"You bet it's not!" answered a voice.

Both Celvia and Zoréno literally spun around to see far within the confines of one the areas behind a door was Abdul sitting criss-crossed holding up a giant limb of a Gillian, munching on it like a drum-stick chicken leg.

"How do you keep all this food so fresh!" exclaimed the feasting adjuchas, finishing his statement in between bites. The Basurinera staff and attendants in this section fled deeper into the recesses of the facility at Abdul's sudden appearance.

_What the...that's Dámian's arm! The one I ripped off earlier! But-" _thought Zoréno remembering his sentient Gillian once more before interrupting his own thoughts.

"How did you escape our ceros?! You were lying face down kissing the ground! You shouldn't have been able to get away!"

"Huh? Quit screaming man, I've got sensitive ears. Anyways, it's not like I had to get up on both legs, brush myself off and and then briskly walk away from the incoming cero. It's called 'pushing myself off the ground'. Not that difficult or exclusive of a technique," he said tossing the limb aside and cricking his neck, "Especially considering you guys waited like twenty-six hours just now for the smoke to clear," he said continuing the cricking motions.

"You know, I'll give you guys one thing. All those hits you gave me actually managed to get the rest of the kinks out my neck from when I was cooped up in that little cell; well it wasn't actually a cage or anything, but you get my point," he continued, standing up now seeing the shocked expressions behind his opponent's masks.

"Aww, what's wrong? You all beat me so easily up on the desert didn't you? Why so discouraged?"

"Ahaha trust me on this one Tarragó when I say we're far from discouraged. In fact, when we slaughtered you up there it was solely because of our advanced and superior battle tactics,"

_"Aaaaand she doesn't mention the six-on-one factor," _observed Abdul. Of course he wasn't using that as an excuse for his loss, he was just making an observation.

"But tell me," continued Celvia over his thoughts, "Did you even once see any of us use our hollow abilities or did you just assume we were all weakling generic melee hollows like yourself? Because if you couldn't stand up to us then," she said raising her arm and pointing out her index finger as black light coalesced at the fingertip, "What makes your chances now any better?" she asked as a weak narrow band of black light energy jettisoned off her index finger, forming into a small ball headed right towards him.

The adjuchas, barely able to process the speed, made to smack it away in an attempt at deflection, but when he did so, it ballooned around and enclosed him, forming a nebulous spherical barrier around him.

_"What the-" _thought Abdul in shock, but Celvia this time instead of shooting the band of energy that formed into the small black ball, now shot a band that solidified into a continuous black 'beam'.

It was sustained as it linked to the spherical barrier around Abdul.

"Goooooing up!" she stated with inflection on the last word while moving her pointed index finger upwards, bringing up the black beam and spherical barrier it was attached to in tandem with no lag-time.

The distance between her finger and the barrier meant that even the slightest twitch of it upwards caused the nebulous energy field with Abdul inside to fly up towards the Basurinera ceiling that surrounded the drop used to arrive to their location from El Centro.

Upon contact with the ceiling, the barrier exploded in a brilliant black light. The prone form of Abdul fell out the explosion in a tendril of dirt and smoke from the ceiling, but Celvia wasted no time shooting another orb forming black band at him. But it went right through the tendril and dissipated, revealing her target wasn't there at all.

_"What?"_

"Celvia! Behind you!" shouted Zoréno in alarmed concern as Celvia ducked, dodging an incoming silver, navy blue fist. Quickly, she did a a backwards kick which a prepared Abdul dodged and grabbed, before swinging her around to build up momentum.

Celvia responded to this by actually charging up her pink-lavender cero from her foot! This shocked Abdul to the point that he let go of her pre-maturely and sonído'd away right as Celvia purposely fired the half-charged blast and somersaulted in the air from the thrust of the cero to land on her feet where the previously concerned Zoréno had just been.

Just been.

Abdul realized too late mid-step as he sonído'd right into a counter-sonído'ing Zoréno's in-coming fist. Literally at the last nano-second he managed to move his head directly out of the gigantic fist's path as it now merely scraped his profile as he elbowed the simian adjuchas in the gut while crashing into him.

The sudden jab caused Zoréno to do a powerful howl; not out of pain, but actually as a counter-attack. The howl sounded like a howler monkey's vocalization but with infinitely more base. The howl formed an actual impact that caused visible ripples in the air, sending Abdul flying three-hundred meters within only a second where a recently sonído'd Celvia was already waiting, already in the process of firing another black bubble-orb.

As it came, the disoriented Abdul managed to get his back left foot claw to touch the ground, giving him enough leverage to do a "sonído-hop-skip" like a rock in a pond, soaring over the incoming orb and then Celvia, barely a centimeter over her mask.

Still careening from Zoréno's attack, Abdul reoriented himself as he landed about a basketball court away from Celvia. He'd practically gone deaf from whatever Zoréno had done. Did he not clearly say he had sensitive ears? Plus being caught in whatever the heck that barrier explosion of Celvia's was didn't help his audial senses any better either. He barely managed to sonído out of there right after it blew up.

"You seem a little winded Tarragó," came the simian adjuchas after buzzing in next to Celvia. The latter adjuchas had turned around to face Abdul after his great escape of her barrier forming black orb.

Abdul barely managed to make out Zoréno's voice above the ringing of his ears. He simply looked on uncharacteristically silent and grave. Celvia seemed to take gleeful notice of his sudden apparent temperament change.

"So how do you like my **Luz Negra**(Black Light) ability? It uses the basic physics of zero-point energy fields. Not too bad huh?" questioned Celvia pridefully with hands on her hips and eyes proudly shut. This only elicited a scoff from Zoréno.

"Because someone like Tarragó can comprehend such an advanced concept that's obviously over his head Celvia,"

"Well technically I'm surprised _you _can comprehend Zoréno. You're not exactly what one calls 'refined'." responded Celvia stuffily as if her nose were up in the air.

"Tch! So sickeningly snobbish. This is why I hate associating with you. You know I'm way smarter than you!"

"And yet your crass and obnoxious so-called '**Aullando Espíritu**'("Howling Spirit") ability to scream at people is hardly the sophisticated or 'refined' type. Powers match their owners for a reason,"  
><strong><br>**"What the-?! It was my 'Aullido Primal'("Primal Howl/Wail") just now that sent Tarragó flying like a rag-doll while your 'polite', 'eloquent' explosions just helped him shed a layer of dead skin. So you know what?-Congratulate yourself; you just took care of his cosmetic needs!"

"Oh spare me just this once—I'm begging you Zoréno! Wasn't it obvious that I was just amusing myself? And the word 'primal' in your attack name should let everyone know just how primiti-"

_"_GAAAAH!—SHUT UP! SHUT UP ALREADY! Do you just talk for the sake of talking?! Quit arguing over who's up their own butts more! If it makes both of you happy, you're both stuck up pricks in your own special unique ways!" shouted Abdul clenching his fist. Their literally baseless bickering actually hurt his ears more than Zoréno's attack, "Now then, no more talking! Food the talks back is the worst kind," he finished.

Zoréno actually looked caught of guard at that statement. Comfortably standing with a hunch and his arms crossed, he allowed his right arm to be outstretched towards Abdul.

"Ha! And just where have _you _been the past five minutes? You have no chance," he taunted, charging goldenrod energy before firing it with simple words.

"**Cero División.**"

Abdul saw this as a challenge. "Just when are hollows gonna wise up and learn? Ceros never kill anybody!" he shouted before revealing the now glowing hand he had resting behind his thigh, "Except when _I _use them!" he finished firing his sterling silver blast to contest Zoréno's.

They collided into what seemed like an explosion before Zoréno's part of the explosion siphoned off into five individual beams.

"Ohoho, bad move, bad move Tarragó. Now they have a even better lock on your reiatsu," commented the simian adjuchas as the five blast seemed to home in in Abdul.

_"What in the world!? What's with this—no, these ceros?" _questioned Abdul jumping up to the ceiling to dodge, only for the beams to pursue.

Celvia had other plans. She generated a black orb off her fingertips in her hand before crushing it, causing her to be enveloped herself like Abdul had earlier. With haste from inside the orb she pointed to a future spot in the trajectory of Abdul's jump while generating pink-lavender energy in front of her masquerade-ball styled mask.

_"Rayo Negro(Black Ray)," _she thought, firing a black beam from her finger that went behind Abdul, and in a flash, the orb traveled up the beam like a ski-lift except the speed was indecipherable from instantaneous; faster than even sonído. Her encompassing orb and fledgling black beam disintegrated upon arrival as she simultaneously turned to fire her pre-charged pink-lavender cero.

Between her literally sudden cero and Zoréno's five individual cero-fifths, Abdul was caught in the middle as pink-lavender combined with goldenrod for a surreal explosion of color.

Instantly landing next to a crossed armed Zoréno mid-explosion and looking up, she thought to herself, _"There's no way he could've escaped that. Last time he got caught in my explosion, but managed to come out of it, but this time it's over," _she decided with finality as she anticipated a body to drop out after the explosion finished.

But it finished, and...there was nothing.

"Are you two finished spamming energy blasts? The pyrotechnics aren't even entertaining any more."

It was him! But how?! That was point-blank-point-blank. This was ridiculous! Both adjuchas pinpointed the origin of the voice and saw him up on the ceiling. He was literally hanging upside down with his feet firmly attached to the ceiling thanks to his claws. With arms crossed and looking down he continued his chiding.

"Tch," he began, absentmindedly rubbing the back of his head with one hand, "I've been waiting all this time for something interesting. But so far the only thing I've even remotely appreciated is the 'chiropractor barrage™' diva-girl down there did to me earlier," he said mocking Celvia's rally earlier into the fight, "I did say it got _some_, but not _all _the kinks out my neck. I was really hoping you'd finish the job at some point, but then ape-man there felt like vaporizing my ear drums, and then both of you put on separate low budget firework festivals?! What the hell is this?"

"Why you! Bragging while you're getting the life knocked out of you? It seems you didn't learn your lesson the first time!" shouted Zoréno. This little comment seemed to finally tick Abdul off, but for reasons other than one would expect.

"'Getting the life knocked out of me?' That's what I was doing? So far as I'm concerned, you people haven't even finished your obligatory jobs of getting the kinks out my freakin' neck for keeping me in that cell!" he shouted before his voice got low and sinister, "Do yourselves a favor. Quit holding back and use full power," he finished to Celvia's apparent non-reaction and Zoréno's amusement.

"Ha! 'Do ourselves favors? Use full power?' This is big talk coming from the weakling garbage hollow who's been on defense the entire time, both up on the desert and now here in this fight! You haven't so much as scratched either of us-"

**"ZORÈNO!"**

The uncharacteristic outburst from the usually lax and witty, and at times charismatic hollow silenced the room.

"H-huh? Celvia?" asked the simian adjuchas. It wasn't often Celvia did such a thing. Feeling her reiatsu...in this authoritative way brought back subconscious flashbacks.

"Zoréno," she repeated again, this time in a calm voice, the top of her mask shaded so one wasn't able to see her eyes, "Just hold on for a second. Let's play along with little Tarragó's bait game. He has a point. This so-called 'fight' is going nowhere fast. Let's use our 'true' power," she said raising her head up, somehow revealing glee on the expressionless masquerade-ball looking mask.

Zoréno's eyes nearly bust out of his mask. Was this the same Celvia?

"W-WHAT? But this is practically play-time, not a life or death serious situation! You said it yourself earlier that you were 'just amusing yourself'!"

"And I still plan to do just that. Particularly," said Celvia clenching both fists, "When I get to see the 'amusing' sight of Tarragó cowering like a child!" she finished connivingly.

"Wait—what?! What was that?" said Abdul. He was shouting as if he were newly deaf, "Don't leave me out the conversation you guys! My ears are still ringing from attempted genocide on my ear canal so all I heard just now was 'cowering like child'. Um...Is there a reason you guys are making fun of the kid I ate?" continued Abdul now jeeringly, "Wasn't he like your teammate or mascot or something?" he finished.

Smugness and smirks evaporated as Celvia and Zoréno's reiatsus skyrocketed. Loud-pink and goldenrod auras twisted sinuously together covering the entire sub-kilometer in diameter flat terrain that was their battleground and flooded La Basurinera. Not just that one section from before, but all of the Basurinera staff and attendants had long since fled deeper into the facilitiy's recesses.

"Yes! This is it! Your full powers! You idiots should have powered up to begin wi-!"

"Powered up?" interjected Celvia in a strained voice, "We haven't even 'begun' yet."

_"What?"_

"Of all hollows, no matter what stage of evolution they're at, only the elite who've truly mastered their abilities can do what you're about to see!" she finished, standing next to Zoréno as both of their spiritual pressures crested, blinding Abdul. The primal roar of two hollows echoed out their mouths, bouncing off the walls as sand fell from the ceiling, threatening to dislodge Abdul's clutch on it. Momentarily shielding his eyes from the sand, Abdul took in the new sight.

On the ground brimming with reiatsu were two newly minted forms. Slender greyish-lavender Celvia had tripled in height. Her previously lithe, taut limbs were even longer now, yet stockier and square in return. The cheek bulges of her mask along with the swooshing markings that accented them were now obtuse and tribal in design respectively. Her greyish-lavender skin was now full-on grey with seemingly luminous black streaks.

Zoréno had quadrupled in height and mass. He'd seemingly taken on the form of the prehistoric giant great ape Gigantopithecus itself. Bleached-gold complimentary hair now covered his goldenrod hide and drooped almost like the leaves of a weeping willow. The previous contrast between his mesomorphic upper body and endomorphic lower body was starkly enlarged along with his arm size at almost the same ratio to the rest of his body as Abdul's forearms were to his. His formerly obtuse arrow-headed mask was now a 90° right angle with now goldenrod markings that accented the shape instead of the burgundy markings like previously.

"You get it now Tarragó?" came Celvia in a new voice. It was a mixture between her former mezzo-soprano and a contralto version of it, "Of all of us only Zoréno and I have the elite ability to transform! We have such control over our abilities that we can seal our full power deep within ourselves so that we don't always exert this much energy. But this is the true extent of our powers!; our true current adjuchas forms!"

"**Protohumano**!" finished Celvia.

"**Gigantos**!" echoed Zoréno in his new deeper voice as the both looked up to Abdul on the ceiling.

This was a lot for Abdul to take in. First these two pull out moves and techniques he's never seen before like that specialized afterimage, just like they'd done when he fought all six of them on the desert. Some of their attacks like Celvia's speed rally earlier apparently had names. Then there was both of their weird abilities, then Zoréno with his weird cero, and now _this_. And yet instead of being overwhelmed, he went from pure wonder to a mixture of deadpanned confusion in...about 1.5 seconds flat. Abdul wasn't impressed and this was his cue to ruin the tension. Mentally he cracked his knuckles and hoped his audience was prepared.

"Woah, woah woah, hold up a second Shapeshifters One and Two. Let me get this straight...I mean it's just that I can't get over that you-you actually _named _your original forms?" he questioned with his voice cracking in incredulity.

"I mean isn't that...completely backwards? Shouldn't you name your 'sub-forms' instead? Or at least name a actual transformation that's actually above or at least a 'variation' of your actual base forms? Like if I transformed and sprouted wings, that variation would by my 'Flight form'? Isn't that how it works? If you think about it, all you two geniuses managed to accomplish is the equivalent of someone taking off their clothes!"

Abdul continued his rant much to the surprising non-reactions of Celvia or Zoréno before he spoke up.

"Hey...hey Celvia?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm ending this."

A long silence was held as Abdul's ramblings continued.

After some time she finally responded, speaking with finality.

"Do it."

At those words Zoréno instantly slammed his now even more gigantic palms on the ground, causing hand-print depressions.

_"Cero Erupción," _he thought silently as he pored massive amount of energy into the ground through his palms.

This caused the entire prevailing sub-kilometer plateau to instantly erupt with multitudes of individual-sized ceros that combined into one huge blast, shooting up to the ceiling, largely out-sizing in diametric surface area the narrow entrance down from El Centro and blasting up entirely to the forest within El Centro, piercing up to the canopy and going up to the desert with all the energy of a gamma ray.

Unlike Celvia's previous merely metaphorical analogy of the base being one, it seemed for those few seconds that Los Seis Pilares now had an actual literal 'beacon of light'.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started:(cont from last chapter)  
>Chapter Finished on paper:(cont to next chapter)<br>Chapter Typed: August 23, 2:34 PM- 7:00 PM  
>Revisions: September 15-16, 2012; November 11, 2012<strong>

*-Cráneo Nudillos Golpe (Skull-Knuckle Slam) It wasn't named in the chapter since I felt the action sequence would get too cluttered.

So the transformation ability was inspired by many hollows that could seemingly transform. I thought I'd elaborate on it. Also, the chapter subtitle Metamorphosis references their transformations.  
>Edit: I just realized this chapter reads must better than it felt like when I was typing it.<p>

Quote: "There's probably even some dead animal hollows in here from when we first started, but the majority of the sustenance you see here has been shipped from headquarters or even other 'locations' over time,"  
>-Will be referenced later.<p>

Quote: "It wasn't often Celvia did such a thing. Feeling her reiatsu...in this authoritative way brought back subconscious flashbacks."  
>-This narration will also be referenced in some form later.<p>

Other Techniques/Abilities used/revealed this chapter:

-Modo de Sonído Engañosa # 2: Estático'"("Way of Deceptive Sound #2: Static"): An afterimage technique.  
>-'Primero rueda de color de ruido. Parte 1: Ruido Violeta, Parte 2: Ruido Rosa, Parte 3: Ruido rojo, Ruido Final: Blanco' (Spanish for "First color wheel of noise. Part 1: Violet Noise, Part 2: Pink Noise, Part 3: Red Noise, Noise Finale: White Noise"):<strong> A rally barrage of close combat. This attack was inspired by the spectral density classifications of noise which uses 'colors'.<strong>

-Luz Negra(Black Light): Celvia's hollow ability.

-'Aullando Espíritu'("Howling Spirit"): Zoréno's hollow ability.

-'Aullido Primal'("Primal Howl/Wail"): Technique of Zoréno's.

-'Cero División'("Division Cero"): Cero technique of Zoréno's. A play on the term "zero division".

-Rayo Negro(Black Ray): A technique of Celvia's.

Protohumano-Transformation of Celvia.  
>Gigantos-Transformation of Zoréno<p>

-Cero Erupción("Eruption Cero"): Cero technique of Zoréno's in his Gigantos form.


	21. The Mockingbird Flock

(11/17/12)Edit: I woke up and thought today was Sunday and published early, so you guys got lucky. Hiatus starts Jan 8th, 2013, the week of Jan 6th. Check my profile for updates to the story's status.**  
><strong>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.

* * *

><p>The Mockingbird Flock<br>-

Biomimicry

**September 10th**

**8:49 A.M. Orihime was caught in yet another bad spot!**

After initially busting out of Lía, they'd stretched out a little like they were made of clay as if cooped up for too long inside of her. And now the entire flock of scary and downright creepy avian hollows descended on Orihime, Baigon, Hinagiku and Lily in a swarm. If these things were for sale, the advertiser would describe them something like this, "At about the size of mini-ospreys, triple the swiftness of even the fastest hummingbird, and infinitely more predatorial instinct than a falcon, eagle, hawk or even the fierceness of a piranha all combined together _hundreds_ of times over, these little monsters are the ultimate killing machines! And we mean that literally! Because with their drone-like efficiency, they're hardwired to annihilate all your enemies with no margin of error! With this limited time offer buy two, get one for double the price!"

Yep. Good ol' commercials. For Orihime's sake let's hope that was typical fare of exaggerated false advertisement.

"Guys let's go!" shouted the injured Rikka wielder.

"Right!" responded the Kesshun trio in unison as they formed Santen Kesshun for her to merge her hand into, but the flock was closing in only mere feet away from her.

She did a rudimentary shunpo backwards, tripping as she landed from going in a different direction than usual. Luckily the shield to which her hand was attached held her in place from falling back.

Hastily infusing white energy in the shield as the flock closed in within half another second she shouted as the now glowing white shield enlarged in tandem, "Santen Kesshun-Shō!"

The enlarged shield shot off her hand as if shot from a Gatling gun as the birds of the flock immediately began impacting it.

"I reject!" shouted Orihime with delayed kotodama, increasing the speed of the shield even more. She chose not to enlarge it any further than it already was so as to keep reishi density and the effect was incredible. Have you ever seen a bird fly unknowingly right into a clear window? Yes? Ok then. Well have you ever seen the window fly into the bird? What happened here was clearly a combination of both. Yet there were no crushing of bones or snapping of necks of the creatures like what would happen to a normal bird. There were only sickening dull thuds of the overlapping impact of all the now disfigured creatures. Where their masked heads and upper body used to be was now merely a flat pancake shape leaving what was left of their wings to continue flapping in vain, slower and slower still as they finally hit the ground motionless; the shock of the final fall seemingly knocking out their remaining life. Santen Kesshun had effectively forcibly rammed through it's targets.

Yet the flock was vigilant. Like bees or a school of fish with their swarm mentality, once the vanguard of their formation began being impacted, the majority had effortlessly dispersed out of speedy Santen Kesshun's straight path before joining back together with their other brethren as the shield passed in the blink of an eye. It was as if somebody had tried to throw a boulder in a pond at a passing school of fish. It didn't have very high kill efficiency or contact success ratio at all.

And what's more is that the rest of the flock not caught in the section of the Santen Kesshun impacts instead of charging towards Orihime, simply curved back around to go after the still in inertia-filled shield.

All of this happened within a little over the amount of time it took the shield to ram through it's targets which was slightly under a second, leaving Orihime in shock at what was now happening.

_"Eh?! They're not coming after m—!"_ thought Orihime, cut off as the flock actually split up into three subsections and dove towards the three corners of the shield. At that her eyes widened.

All this time the recently molted Lía had been watching with her arms smugly crossed, reading Orihime's facial expressions like a book.

"Of course they're not after _you_. Without those creatures—the ones you call 'yourself'—you're powerless. And if you really are behind everything like you said, I'm going to make sure you watch as each of your creatures are hunted down and ripped to shreds one by one!" began the now completely skeletal adjuchas(besides her mask and beak) putting on her familiar forced over-dramatic voice she used back in Segunda Cárcel.

"I already called them prey before, so now watch as they fulfill their niche as 'prey animals' eaten by their natural predators! But don't get too anxious, my flock isn't interested in you. You're _mine_ and you're next, or did you forget I called you prey as well? I being a hollow, and you a human, makes me your natural predator as well! Now we just have to wait as unbiased time itself lets 'nature' take it's course in both battle theatres!" she finished, looking back at the struggle between predator and prey.

Santen Kesshun rammed it's way out of the three flock-tendrils attacking it's corners, but the flock proportionally readjusted with each of the shield's every movements; and with such swiftness! In essence, Santen Kesshun was gaining no ground or maneuvering room, and loosing both with every second as the birds actually began to get attempted chomps near each of the shield's vertices.  
>Meanwhile others were hovering on standby with their rapidly flapping wings, gradually forming an omni-directional metasphere around the aerial space so that they'd be on alert if the shield made a sudden break for it.<p>

Faced with this, Santen Kesshun resorted to a defensive rapid spin, causing the preying flock to be at a loss.

"Enough!" shouted Lía, "Surround it before it breaks out of the perimeter!" she commanded with military-like authority, using hand gestures.

Instantly the section of the flock that had been harassing the shield fell back, filling in the the spherical formation with the rest of the majority of birds who'd been on standby. It was a similar formation Lía had used with the Gillian and hollows in Segunda Cárcel to initially surround Abdul and Ashido.

At this Santen Kesshun stopped spinning.

_"What are they up to?" _thought Hinagiku tensely in his corner of the shield.

_"The atmosphere's turned grave," _observed Baigon anxiously.

"This—," began Lily aloud.

"Start the **Bandada Bombardeo**(Flock Bombing)*!" shouted Lía with outstretched arms that she clasped to herself with conviction as all the avian creatures began shooting a barrage of garnet 'energy pellets' at Senten Kesshun in the center of the sphere. With nowhere to go, the shield began getting pummeled, even under full kotodama, it still began to crack exponentially.

_"This is horrible! And I didn't even feel her reiatsu go down from using that attack! I've got to-" _started Orihime running towards the aerial pummeling with her hands on her hairpins before the shield unmercifully exploded causing her to stop in her tracks before she heard a buzz move in about five-hundred meters horizontally parallel to herself. There, was Lía with her arms still smugly crossed.

_"I can't fully match her speed at all!"_ said the human girl in her head before looking back up at the avian sphere formation further ahead, _"Of course I can re-summon them, they can re-summon themselves, but they haven't yet and they know it'll draw them to me. But I sense there's a reason beyond that so it's up to me to come up with a plan while they keep this up! She made a point to separate the fight and not fight me right now so I've got to take advantage of that while I still can since she could jump in at any time!"_

Directly after Orihime's thoughts, the Kesshun trio amidst barely dodging the ongoing bombardments re-summoned themselves to Orihime in a combined tendril flying right out of the sphere formation as the caught off guard flock immediately mobilized and orderly took chase, forming their own tendril to best follow at the most efficient speed.

_"Oh! I see now! This is the perfect time to introduce him to the fight!" _thought the girl as her three Rikka zoomed to her in a burst of glowing light.

Lía looked as if she had just raised an eyebrow at the new golden light, as her flock-tendril took pursuit like a dark cloud only for yet another golden light to appear off of Orihime's left profile.

_"Wh-?" _was all the adjuchas could think before she heard an answer.

"Tsubaki! Koten Zanshun! I reject!" shouted the chestnut-brown haired girl firing with her one good arm her self proclaimed 'solitary sharp-shooter' Rikka. He sliced through the dense flock-tendril like butter, full kotodama Koten Zanshun's range of attack effectively reaching a larger portion of the flock this time than the shield had earlier before the majority of flock members dispersed and rejoined together again just like the first instance with Santen Kesshun.

Birds were cut so cleanly that they fell to the ground still connected before hitting the sand and only then coming apart. Lía looked unfazed at this development.

"Well now, I was trying to get you to use your slicing ability with either of those first three and then you generate another one from what looked like your head or something," began the adjuchas focusing in on the sides of Orihime's head with her acute avian vision, _"Just how much more of them does she have?_" she finished mentally.

_"With everyone out, I should be able to keep up with her speed better. But if I do that I'm have to use everything I've got!" _thought Orihime summoning Shun'ō and Ayame in more golden flashes of light. She could've brought all the Rikka out earlier, but it only would've attracted more of the flock towards her and she wouldn't have gotten such a perfect hit on the flock which had packed close together to follow the Kesshun trio like she had just now.

_"Tch! More of them after all?!" _grimaced Lía.

With the newly summoned Rikka the human girl originally had the intention to quickly heal herself; at least some basic first aid, but that wasn't in destiny's cards.

"Behind us!" shouted Lily as Orihime managed to pull off a shunpo assisted jump to only a couple meters away, barely dodging the dive-bombing creatures of the flock, _"Where did they come from!?"_

Lía was pleasantly surprised at hearing one of them speak earlier and again for the second time just now warning the girl and the others to dodge, but it made the hunt that much more exhilarating and interesting. Though she felt comfortable in mentally noting that her interest was still dwarfed compared to how obsessive or curious Zoréno or Klarradi would be were they in her shoes._  
><em>

Upon landing, Orihime faced the incoming monsters and made to go on the offensive only to be caught off guard with more of them coming again from behind. _"What?!"_

She had no spare reaction time, not even to put up Santen Kesshun as the creatures shot more dive-bombs causing the Rikka to dodge point-blank before flying off in all directions as the creatures took chase.

_"They're still only after the Rikka!"_

_"They've scattered us to split us all up! Incredibly tactical. And the aduchas doesn't know what Shun'ō and Ayame can do so she's taking no chances,"_ thought Hinagiku in the midst of fleeing to the north east.

_"Just where did they come from!" _thought an exasperated Lily echoing Orihime's thoughts when she _saw it_ causing her eyes to widen behind her goggles. The last of the birds who had impacted Santen Kesshun and had their heads and upper bodies basically horizontally flattened? They were now stretching back out as if made of clay and flying around the battlefield circling to where they had just been dual-attacked. "We got flanked!" concluded Lily aloud, _"But how didn't they die?!"_

_"That's not 'all' little fairies," _thought Lía deviously reading the expressions on the Rikka's faces from afar.

At a good distance from his predators, Shun'ō came to learn exactly what 'all' was as he flew eastward before being abruptly intercepted from below, nearly being swallowed whole.

"The ones Tsubaki killed!" realized the Rikka captain in horror only after he glimpsed down at the ground along Koten Zanshun's previous route for the source of his sudden attacks, seeing the previously vertically split birds actually putting their halves back together before rising up to attack him in column formations with their swarm behavior.

With the entire flock coming back in action, there was easily over two-thousand of them, and they were orderly splitting themselves up among all six of the Rikka mid-pursuit.

"Hah! You get it now girl? You get it now little fairies?!" said Lía choosing to address the Rikka as well after hearing Lily's multiple instances of speaking and now Shun'ō's outburst.

Thoughts flowed in Orihime's head at this surreal spectacle.

"It doesn't matter if you smash or slice, blunt force can't kill my flock! They come from me and have my essence! As long as I'm alive, they'll continue to reform and even if I _was_ somehow completely destroyed, they'd autonomously combine together and reform me, keeping me fully self-aware of everything," said Lía holding out her arm inviting one of her creatures to seemingly happily fly in and perch on her hand for a roost. Abruptly she flipped her hand and crushed the poor shocked creature unmercifully with a simple grip. She applied the crushed carcass to her broken mask which much to Orihime's shock, regenerated it.

"See? I'm indestructible. And what's more," she went on turning her attention to the now far away fleeing Rikka, "So far it seems that only one of you can do any kind of physical attack. In that case, let's see what you're really capable of. Enough playing around! Kill the slicer-creature!" commanded Lía as swarms of the flock abruptly left the other Rikka and all began flying towards Tsubaki at a previously unseen speed along with the ones that were already chasing him.

_"Where did this speed come from?! They were just messing around with us the whole time? You know what? Forget the woman's plan!"_

The flock zoomed in at unimaginable speeds, gradually surrounding the black haired Rikka and plugging up any escape routes, making even possible re-summoning questionable; if he did, what would happen if the golden light ran into one of the birds? Said bird creatures re-formed the meta-sphere arrangement and slowly had it close in around him like a slowly clenching fist.

Eventually with nowhere left to fly one of the birds abruptly clipped the edge of one of Tsubaki's wings causing him to fall off balance into the clutches of the flock! They flew straight to him as he fell, the 'fist' clenching now completely shut.

A still in shock Orihime made to go directly to attack Lía as the adjuchas said "This is it for fairy number one!" followed by the flock actually shooting bomb blasts to finish him off.

The explosion sounded resoundingly to the hopeless horror of Orihime and the other Rikka as they all shouted his name. They had re-summoned themselves back to Orihime after the flock ceased chasing them and had all been flying toward the sphere formation in an attempt to distract the birds from Tsubaki to no avail; they couldn't bare to lose him a second time. But strangely enough neither they nor their wielder felt that empty feeling like before with his death from Yammy. And before they could even dwell on that thought, new ones came and interrupted it from processing.

_"Eh?" _thought Orihime as a mass amount of bird pieces fell to the ground. She looked up further only to see Tsubaki floating out of flight-form with crossed arms outside the enclosed bird sphere.

"Ha! You're gonna have to be faster than that to catch me! Hey! Over here you diseased looking freaks!"

Orihime was doe-eyed, "Did..Tsubaki-kun just use...shunpo?!" she wondered aloud.

At this, the rest of the Rikka finished flying up and over the long distance to Tsubaki.

"Nice job 'speed-committee captain'!" teased an ecstatic incoming Shun'ō coming out of flight-form followed by the rest of the Rikka doing the same.

"Tch. It was instinctual. Nothing more," stated Tsubaki simply while looking at the wing flapping flock getting back into a formation, almost as if they were mathematically re-calibrating from the elimination of part of it's 'being' along with their targets's sudden relocation.

At this Shun'ō began whispering due to Lía's apparent sensitive hearing abilities. "Well, it is our first fight since Kanō-san explained basic shunpo to Orihime. It was so basic I'm surprised she was able to apply it at all, but that's her for you."

"You know, thinking on it, with the knowledge of shunpo maybe this type of thing was bound to happen at some point," added Baigon in his own whisper. It was odd hearing him whisper for some reason.

"Regardless, this changes things you guys! The adjuchas seems to be set on getting her birds to eat or destroy us instead of attacking Orihime. She feels Orihime is a non-threat and wants to teach her some type of twisted lesson! We can work with that because _Orihime_ knows eventually we have to fight that adjuchas ourselves, and _we _know she's been coming up with one of her ever-changing plans, but now I have one of my own to supplement whatever hers ends up being. Listen up...," whispered Shun'ō calling the Rikka in closer for a group huddle.

Lía meanwhile was quite jaded. _"How did he escape that close of range. I didn't even see what happened!...Wait what are they doing?!" _she mentallyexclaimed as the Shun Shun Rikka now deliberately charged toward her flock in an orderly V-formation.

_"What is this—some type of new combined attack using all six? No! A battle formation?! So she couldn't just stop with me after all; now she's even got her creatures mocking mine!"_

"That's it! I've had it! They're all in one spot so blast them all!" commanded the flock leader as the flock now flew towards their prey shooting the bomb blasts.

Right upon contact the Shun Shun Rikka unanimously used shunpo; it was sort of like a firework explosion in the way they abruptly split up in all directions; this time themselves enticing the flock to follow instead of being chased like before.

_"Grrr. So they're using shunpo are they?" _seethed arm-crossed Lía impatiently tapping her fingers on her bare humerus. As if channeling her rage, the flock increased their speed yet again, splitting into proportionate groups to catch all six of the Rikka. But the Rikka's normal max flight speed combined with their primitive shunpo enabled them to out-speed their predators. They used the occasional shunpo to avoid the otherwise unavoidable barrage of bomb blasts from the now even faster flock.

_"This plan of yours better work you top-knotted captain. That goes for you too woman," _fumed Tsubaki referencing the Rikka captain and the Rikka wielder mid-dodging of several blasts.

"Hmm. Looks like they can't keep up any more after all. We can't have that now can we girl?" questioned Lía rather slyly as she looked over at Orihime.

_"What she up to now?"_

"It's just that I'm sure you're well acquainted with 'Modo de Sonído Engañosa # 1: Eco'?" As the last sound escaped her visible vocal chords, each section of the flock chasing each of the Rikka reflected directions and were suddenly on a collision course with each of them instead, coming straight from the opposing direction.

_"Sonído!?" _mentally shouted Shun'ō, his normally squinted eyes widening in a rare occurrence as he made to fly up to dodge the oncoming flock. Other Rikka did similar reactions with no way to slow their momentum down so abruptly; whereas Tsubaki happily charged headfirst into his collision course.

"But there's also '# 2: Estático'," added Lía pointedly as Tsubaki Koten Zanshun'ed a horde of buzzing static afterimages much to his dismay.

"And then there's '#3: Reverberación(Spanish for: "Reverberation")'," added Lía now becoming vocally more off-handed compared to her first two examples. At this Tsubaki discovered the location of his real bird targets and began Koten Zanshun'ing them continuously only to discover a continuous streak of afterimages as he chain-cut them one after the other, never finding a physical target; screaming in frustration before suddenly being consumed in a blast from all directions out of nowhere.

"Ya' know, in some ways it could be considered a natural continuation of 'Estático'. But of course the two can be used mutually exclusive of course," she finished like a smug teacher, slowly opening her eyes only to be shocked at seeing Orihime with crossed arms and a confident smile looking at Tsubaki rising out of the smoke of the explosion in a flash.

With Tsubaki added to the list, all the Rikka were once again officially on the run like they were at first rather than guiding their pursuers like they just had for that brief period. With a display of shunpo and sonído in the skies the flock had regained it's speed advantage in spades. With around three hundred thirty-three creatures per Rikka, they were now barely escaping and being cut off from even momentary aerial refuge multiple times. The flock had stopped shooting bomb blasts since they weren't in a general formation. Any random shooting could result in friendly fire. Even so, the clock was ticking and it was only a matter of time. Yet here the girl was still with her proud smile. It enraged the avian adjuchas that this person, this human who had been one of the sole contributors in her brother's death; that this girl had the nerve to even curl her lips a half-inch upwards-!

"Enough," she stated simply as the the _entire_ flock instantly appeared behind her in a series of proportional gridlocked columns. For the battlefield to easily be multiple city blocks apart and hundred of meters off the ground in some of the Rikka's cases(Ayame), for the enemy to simply re-mobilize with such swiftness was jarring.

Let's just say Lía had Orihime's full attention after she did that and even shocked the girl by instantly then closing the aforementioned five-hundred meter gap between them, sparing only about ten meters in distance between the two, her flock sonído'ing with her in real-time while staying in gridlock-column formation.

"Well," began the bareboned adjuchas with a chuckle, "I'm glad to see the smirk gone from your face. I was thinking about literally ripping it off for a while there. And you still seem shocked by my speed. If you couldn't tell, of all the adjuchas in Los Seis Pilares, _I_ am the fastest. And as such, I created the ultimate sonído for traveling long distances near instantly. What you saw the flock do was proof enough. I call it 'Peregrino Sonído'"

_"Guh...she brought them all down like that. She's up to something big,"_ thought Orihime wiping the still dripping blood from her mouth with the wrist of her good arm for the umpteenth time. The opposite arm lay limp due in part to her collar bone being visibly smashed out of place and her shoulder blade on that same side felt as if it had been jammed in. And you thought finger jams were bad? In the fist place who even knew a shoulder blade _could _get jammed?

"No need to explain," came Orihime her voice cracking a little, "No need to explain that concept to me," she repeated a clearer voice. "You used that sonído to summon your flock to you. I can do the same with my Rikka," she voiced with gumption as all six Rikka appeared to her in a trail of golden light; all of them staying in their flight forms upon arrival.

"Still you insist on copying me!" yelled the avian adjuchas raising her reiatsu once more to a visible garnet as the rest of the previously 'injured' and now restored flock sonído'd into the gridlock formation as if on cue.

"I'm tired of this divided battle, this cat and mouse game! I'm just destroying all of you all at once!" shouted garnet silhouetted Lía as the full flock all began charging garnet bomb-blasts, but Orihime's eyes widened as she realized otherwise.

"Ha! Look at your face! You see _now_!? There's no escape for you! If you try running away, my faster flock will easily proportionally sonído along with you just like they did with your first three creatures! And this is different than before when I had the Gillian fire ceros back in Xodri's gaol girl! Since they're of my essence, each raptor of my flock can fire a full-powered cero _equal_ to what I can fire by myself!" she finished, beginning to charge her slightly lighter hued garnet cero.

A novel thing began taking place.

With Lía's fledgling cero in place, narrow bands of energy stretched from some of the the immediate surrounding charging ceros of the flock as if magnetic and connected with Lía's. At this a chain reaction occurred with the already connected attacks in the middle acting like a catalyst as the reaction branched out to the edges of the gridlock formation, connecting and sewing every charging garnet cero into the likeness of a giant interwoven net-wall or web. And in the middle of this grand wall was Lía.

Orihime looked at her impending death not with dread, but with airy listlessness.

"I_ can't just give up...I've got to do something but..."_

_"At least you get to see my most powerful attack,"_thought the adjuchas.

_"_Cero Tejido-Nido de las Aves Rapaz (Woven-Nest Cero of the Raptor Flock)".

_"Goodbye human girl,"_ thought Lía in a rather stone-masked fashion. With no hesitation at all she fired at a slant towards the ground as the "net" literally expunged from its launching point consuming everything in it's path.

The air itself twisted at the intensity of the surreal explosion. The eternal twilight of the desert was awoken for an instant. Slowly and then swiftly the intense smoke cleared revealing a crater almost one-fourth the size of a tiny city; no joke, but possible exaggeration. The point is, this thing was huge, and yet Lía hadn't budged from her firing spot as if the attack had no recoil to move away from. She and her flock were in their same positions, taking in the new crater vista whose bottom wasn't visible even under the waxing crescent moonlight.

After a _very_ long and tense silence Lía abruptly broke out her rigid firing stance throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation before resting them behind her head.

"GAAARGH! FINALLY! SHE'S DEAD!" she shouted into the night. "Seriously though, what an annoying human...but what a waste though...," she trailed off ambiguously.

"Well...uh..I'm sorry I've been such a disappointment so far. But maybe I can make it up to you," came a voice. A waterfall of different emotions poured onto Lía as she slowly turned around as the voice continued, "It's pretty scary. Even though we aren't in a shallow area like before, it looks like your attack still almost cut down into the forest," finished the voice as Lía completed her half-revolution.

The girl was standing on the apex of a tall isosceles dune about one-third a soccer field away. She had a meek smile as the wind blew her hair eastward. But what shocked Lía the most was a new previously unseen golden barrier surrounding the girl as her previous injuries and bruises seemed to be slowly disappearing—even her smashed collar bone was disturbingly rising back up under her skin like yeast in an oven, resetting itself and all! And her previously limp arm now had it's hand slowly repeatedly gripping! NO—forget that; even her _clothes _were re-mending!

"WHAT IS THAT THING! AND HOW DID YOU ESCAPE MY-"

"-'Cero with with an unnecessarily long name'?!" interrupted Tsubaki still in flight form, "Stop squawking so the woman can explain!"

At this Lily's eyes narrowed behind her goggles. Shun'ō's smirk grew, Hinagiku uncrossed his arms , Ayame came out her hood-like Rikka appendages while sustaining her corner of the healing shield, and Baigon's eyes widened just a bit as all Rikka turned directly to Tsubaki.

A slight pause came before Tsubaki killed it. "WHAT!?"

"Oh don't act like you don't know. 'Stop squawking'? Was that a mildly unsubtle 'bird' joke? You didn't tell us you were starting up the joke competition again," answered Shun'ō in his corner of the healing shield.

With that incendiary comment, Orihime tuned out the ensuing banter with her now focused expression. "'How was I able to escape?' With shunpo of course," she began. And before Lía could interject she continued, cutting her off, "But there was no time nor place for me to shunpo out of the way. The cero was too wide to go around and too high to somehow jump over with _only my level of shunpo _right?" questioned the human.

Lía was thoroughly annoyed with the way Orihime was asking the questions she assumed the adjuchas had for her, and in a way in which she knew the answers. It may not have been the girl's intention, but it came off as pretentious.

"Wrong. Even though I'm a beginner I was still able to go around the cero in time. Your mistake was carelessly firing while believing there was no way to escape based off the first clumsy shunpos I used so far; attacking without any of the usual safeguards or failproofs somebody would use when dealing with a faster opponent. So even someone with my low level of speed could've easily moved out the way."

"Quit looking at me with that calm expression like you're making sense because you're not you idiot! Even if Cero Tejido-Nido was easy in general to dodge, you yourself just said your so-called shunpo you've displayed so far was hardly fast enough to do so. So were you this fast to begin with and just playing me for stupid earlier or did you magically get faster or something in the past fifteen minutes?!

"Hmmm," began Orihime with an innocent look of contemplation as if she were seriously considering the choices, "It's more of the second explanation really," she admitted sincerely.

"What?!"

"Except that it's not 'I magically got faster'. Again I'm not fast at all. Anybody with decent practice time could've dodged, and in a way that's what happened with me. Shunpo just became easier for me to do."

"What 'practice'? You used shunpo about four times the entire fight before I used my Cero Teji-!" began the avian adjuchas before she stopped talking at seeing Orihime's eyes widen as a serene knowing smile appeared on the girls face.

_"What's with that reaction?"_

"Thanks for confirming it. I think I finally understand you."

This caused something in Lía to begin to snap. Her frustration with the girl's ambiguous words were getting to her.

"Understand what?!"

"How you work," answered Orihime, "You and your flock in particular. Because unlike what you thought earlier I wasn't just standing around helplessly. I could've re-summoned any of my Rikka at any time, but they can do so themselves, so I trusted their decisions. And so I observed your flock and I'd been wondering how exactly you were connected with them. I'm sure you noticed every time I use a technique with my Rikka, my reiatsu goes down. That's part of my connection with them. But your flock was shooting those bombs like crazy and your reiatsu wasn't dropping a bit! You said they were part of you and they even flew out of you. I tried making sense of it but couldn't! But when the ones we thought we destroyed regenerated, that's when I noticed something while you were busy taunting my Rikka," continued the girl picking up a defiant tone.

"I realized each of the birds had a set amount of reiatsu! I didn't notice it before because your spiritual pressure saturated the area when you charged up right before releasing them. So when the birds flew out, I thought it was just a continuation of that saturation; their presences blending in and being indistinguishable from yours. So I thought you were similar to me," explained Orihime causing Lía to take interest in that last admittance, "That is until I felt the difference in the regenerated birds compared to the rest of the flock. They were 'weaker'! Then right after that, the way you said they 'have your essence' and even used one to regenerate your mask. It was obvious then that the birds _literally_ 'came' from you to begin with; that at some point before our fight you must've used some of your spiritual power(reiryoku) to generate the entire flock from yourself, keeping them inside you like you had them earlier until the time called for you to release them. And while doing that, you must've rested to restore back the energy it took to make them.

Orihime said this all looking down at the ground as if she was asking a question and upon finishing looked up at the adjuchas with an "Am I right?" expression. Truthfully she'd been worried. She'd always been told much to her confusion that she had a "overactive imagination", which she eventually came to rebut by claiming her imagination was neither "over" nor "under", but "between". At least that's what it seemed like to her. Even so, those previous descriptions people attached to her mind made her a little insecure. Was her imagination corrupting her ability to make even a hypothesis? Was she fantasizing again about certain elements of her theory. It was a bit of a stretch after all, so as she looked up at the adjuchas for confirmation she was shocked that it looked as if the adjuchas thought her deepest darkest secrets had just been revealed off-handedly. This caused Orihime to do a caught off-guard reaction herself.

It wasn't like she had psychic powers or anything like some cartoon superhero, no matter how much she dreamed of being one, but that's another daydream for another time.

"W-what's with that reaction?! I just figured things that way since it seemed your relation to your flock is opposite of mine with the Rikka at every turn. They don't have a set amount of reiatsu like your flock because I'm their source. I channel my reiatsu through them to use their unique techniques. That's part of our connection, but there's more too," continued Orihime.

_"Was this what she meant when she said she thought I was 'similar' to her? And what does she mean 'more'?" _pondered a pensive Lía as Orihime continued right from her last point.

"I called them 'myself' earlier because these six," she began gesturing to the still arguing Rikka, "_Are _an extension of myself. We're one in the same and part of the same soul. So when you said 'I'd only used shunpo about four times' it helped me realize you were thinking about things in terms of your relation with your flock. That's why I said just now that I finally understood you after you said that, because I knew better. Tell me, since you seemed to be counting mine, how many times did the Rikka use shunpo?"

Lía seemed to have some form of fledgling realization from this.

"Because like I said, I being the source of energy for them is only _part _of our connection. And I realize now, that same 'part' is simply a detail of the full picture. And that 'full picture'," continued Orihime, "Is our 'shared consciousnesses'," explained Orihime, her voice no longer broken like before, her injuries no longer holding back her confidence.

_"Shared what?"_

"You know, it's kinda weird," continued the girl getting a sheepish grin, 'I'm just realizing now that I've never explained it to anyone before at all. I guess because we're still figuring it out ourselves. Because unlike your 'connection' with your flock where they're under your will, but separate from your 'core soul' if I can call it that; and for the most part are like one-track minded robots or something, my Rikka are sentient and are manifestations of my 'inner soul'."

"Inner soul?" came the chiding voice of Lía finally speaking up, "Like a shinigami's zanpakutō?" she asked, _"No wonder she's been able to use shinigami techniques," _she thought mentally at the end before Orihime destroyed her thought process.

"No. I used to think that too, but no. Nothing like a shinigami. It's a different case all together. Because while my Rikka are unique personality-wise and seemingly separate from me, from time to time our...'experiences' overlap. By 'experiences' I mostly mean memories," she explained, now remembering first using the Rikka to help her with her summer homework in Yokosuka before the new trimester after getting back from the Soul Society. And then remembering Shun'ō's conversation with Ayame as if Shun'ō had been speaking to she herself instead.

"But it's not just memories, but 'feelings' and emotion too," continued Orihime now remembering the empty feeling and peril felt upon Tsubaki's "death", the collective listlessness and hopeless depression that had been felt as a result among Orihime and the Rikka afterwards, and the ensuing collective resolve among them right before and further after getting Tsubaki back. Then there was the physical pain they all felt from fighting Fátima and her soul tainting Glotón Semilla ability; all the Rikka feeling their wielder's pain like empaths.

"It's funny though," said the girl snapping out of her episode of reminiscing, " Because I only started testing if it was even possible as a little training experiment almost like an off-handed joke about two weeks ago. But everything that happened after that tells me that whether I tested it or not, I would've experienced it anyways eventually. And earlier this morning I realized having them all out at once helps in battles as well. The more I have out at once, the more of a sort of sixth sense I get," she admitted, remembering somehow mentally keeping up with Fátima's speed after coming out of the river, "And now that first little silly training experiment is starting to come full circle and my dodging your cero is proof of it," she continued smiling as she now crossing her arms with her formerly limp arm having regained full movement.

"So now that you know, you should also understand what I said before. I didn't 'magically get faster'. Shunpo just came more natural to me. Hinagiku over there would compare it to muscle memory or something. And also like I said, 'Anybody with decent practice time could've dodged it'. 'What practice time?' you asked before? The time where my Rikka discovered they could use shunpo," finished Orihime with finality.

Lía had already long since realized as much by that point, but hearing her confirm it directly both annoyed and unnerved her. This was something Orihime took notice of.

"You get it now? I know it took me till just a couple of minutes ago to realize it myself," began the girl anew.

_"Is this girl still talking? Does she ever shut up?" _thought the annoyed avian adjuchas remembering now in new clarity how the Rikka formed a V-formation after Tsubaki discovered shunpo only for them to break apart as the flock chased them again, constantly using shunpo to dodge the bomb blasts, even unnecessarily at times.

"Do I get it?" half-growled Lía which sounded non-threatening in her soprano voice, "You mean that whole sequence was just your little set-up to improve your sucky speed? Seems like a lot of work for such a worthless speed refinement."

"My 'worthless refinement' was enough to save my life, and no it's not 'my setup'. The Rikka planned that by themselves. Honestly it took me all the way till your flock started using sonído to figure out what they'd been up to," finished Orihime dispelling Sōten Kisshun with Lía taking note of her now perfect aesthetic health as the girl's words made her remember back to when she'd wondered why Orihime was smiling. Now knowing the actual reason why she had made the adjuchas even angrier than it had when she didn't know.

"What I meant when I asked 'do you get it' and that even I'd only just realized 'it' was the fact that with all six Rikka and I, if I develop my shared consciousness to it's max, I could probably learn anything seven times faster. Since I started seriously fighting I realized that with the Rikka, the more I fight, the more I'll learn to fight while I'm fighting; the faster I can adapt to new fighting styles. And with each battle or use of my powers, depending on the circumstances, the speed of which all that happens should get faster too!"

At this, Zoréno's massive Cero Erupción simply burst out of the ground to the east and beaconed out into the dark sky.

_"T-T-That's Zoréno's attack! Wait-what's going on down there! Who's fighting who?" _Suddenly Lía realized how despite her already understanding so already previously, that Orihime had _still_ proved to be nothing more than big distraction from the real battles after all. It should've been _her_ vaporizing Tarragó!

"Tch! 'Should?' 'Probably?' 'Could?' You're sitting here explaining everything as if you're not too sure yourself! That's not good now is it?! We'll just have to confirm all your theories for you!" shouted a now bloodlusting Lía as her garnet spiritual pressure engulfed the whole area, her in-formation flock making vocalizations consequently, "I get what you're trying to do! Giving an overly long speech trying to psych me out when truthfully I'm still leagues stronger than you! You've gotten no stronger girl! And your reiatsu's actually plummeted from when you all first interrupted our meeting down in El Centro! Having your creatures spam shunpo didn't help reaitsu-wise at all either, and speaking of which your so-called speed is still laughable! Even with using your creatures as training wheels, you'll need lifetimes before you even approach my speed! You're still the same weak girl!" reiterated Lía sending off a wave of spiritual pressure that caused Orihime to seriously brace herself, at last snapping the Rikka out of their continuous squabble.

"And you think you know so much about me, but you still know nothing! I'm Lía Halconero, an Adjuchas Menos Grande! Warden of Tercera Cárcel of Los Seis Pilares! You're just some freakish science experiment gone wrong!" fumed the soprano-voiced adjuchas, "You _think_ you have potential to learn seven times faster, meaning it's just an idea that you don't even know is possible!" she continued with Orihime now shielding her face with both arms crossed, "But right here and now, I can easily _kill _you seven times faster!"

At this, three compounding buzzes took place, causing Orihime to lower the guard from her face and be shocked at what she saw.

Lía had moved up closer to the dune Orihime stood atop and there were now five exact buzzing clones of both Lía and her entire flock that had surrounded her in a gigantic hexagonal formation with she in the middle with her Rikka. The position where the singular Lía and flock had been now made up the top side of the 'hexagon'. The added 'clones' occasionally went static and made up the five remaining sides.

"This is my **Hermanas Sonído**(Sound Sisters)!" all six 'Lía's' said in unison, "I told you as much before that of all my teammates, I'm the best user of sonído! All I have to do is increase my steps just a little and I can make complete functional-"

"Sorry," apologized Orihime in an ironically unremorseful voice as she interrupted the chorus of Lía's, "I get that you're really strong and all, but it seems like the battles down there are about to finish. So I think it's time I finish things here so I can help my friends. You guys ready?"

"Yeah!" was basically what all six Rikka said to some degree in response as they surrounded Orihime, each facing a separate side of the "hexagon" which were each Lía's with a flocks behind them forming the tall gridlock column wall. Orihime and Shun'ō each faced the supposed original Lía and flock, or at least where the individual beings once were anyways.

The avian adjuchas took ireful notice of this apparent 'counter-formation'.

_"She still insists on mocking me after all this time and she even took my line minus the 'you're really strong' part of course."_

"Fine then. You're so hasty to die now, but _I _told you from the very beginning, killing you off quickly was my intention in the first place!" all Lía's spoke as one, crouching and preparing to attack, "You're the one," they continued finishing their crouching position as Orihime and the Rikka prepared themselves.

"You're the one who made a big lecture!" they shouted, all pouncing to and speed-blitzing to Orihime in the middle, hitting a target as a sandy dust cloud was spawned.

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><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started:(cont from last chapter)  
>Chapter Finished on paper: Aptil 15th, 2012 5:02 P.M.<br>Chapter Typed: August 21st, 2012 4:41 P.M.- August 30th, 2:59 P.M.  
>Revisions: September 16th, November 16, 2012, 10:25 A.M; December 29th, 2012 10:03 AM<strong>

*I think this is truly the first time I've put an attack name in the story and made it authentic in the way it's announced. Ha.

**And thus ends Round Two of the fights! Round Three starts next chapter!** When I first started writing this chapter I was inspired by the thought of two people playing chess against each other.

Now you know Lía is warden of 'Tercera Cárcel'. Check out the map from chapter fourteen to see where it's at.

I think the chapter subtitle Biomimicry is self-explanatory with the theme of Orihime and Lía's battle chapters...

And yes I thought I'd reference the joke competition from early chapters once more.

Techniques revealed this chapter:

Lía pulled out some big ones this chapter.

-'Modo de Sonído Engañosa #3: Reverberación'(Way of Deceptive Sound #3: Reverberation): A continuous chain of afterimages. Can be applied multiple ways and situations.

-'Peregrino Sonído'(Pilgrim Sound): Not only can she use it to sort of re-summon her flock, but she can use it herself as she did this chapter(although not to it's full possible extent). The name of it was inspired by one of my favorite birds of prey called the Peregrine Falcon. Woah I just realized since it's a falcon...and Lía's surname...it's completely a coincidence I promise. I already explained her surname back in the last chapter with her and Orihime. lol

-'Cero Tejido-Nido de las Aves Rapaz (Woven-Nest Cero of the Raptor Flock)': Basically a finishing move. The Cero-net expunges and destroyed everything in it's path in a final explosion. Easily around 1000+ ceros make up the attack. The name plays on the whole bird theme. A bird nest is woven sort of like a net is.

-'Hermanas Sonído'(Sound Sisters). Inspired by Zommari's Gemelos Sonído, and yes there are differences...

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><p>Hiatus starts Jan 8th, 2013, the week of Jan 6th. Check my profile for updates to the story's status.<p> 


	22. Insomniac

Round Three of the fights begin!**  
><strong>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.

* * *

><p>Insomniac<br>-

**September 10th  
><strong>

**8:47.37 A.M. Chad consumed by a cero?!**

KABOOM!

An explosion rocked El Centro.

Klarradi Tamoyo, adjuchas warden of Primera Cárcel looked on in resignment as the smoke cleared.

Suddenly a blast actually peaked out the smoke, coming right at her, "HMM?!" she buzzed out of it's path up to a quartz tree branch above. The residual smoke finally cleared as Chad was on his hands and knees knocked back really far from where he'd impacted the quartz tree earlier; his armored right arm still outstretched from the recent blast firing. Suddenly in an act of overt frustration he slammed his armored palm into the forest floor creating a mini-crater.

"Still alive Yasutora Sado?" questioned Klarradi more to herself than the panting Chad.

The boy didn't respond as he thought about how much more powerful that attack was than Ferenan's psuedo-cero earlier that morning. At this he realized how much the ground was trembling under his armored palm in the crater he created, similar to how the sand made ripples up on the desert in response to his unarmored hand. Snapping out of it and looking up, he barely heard the sound of the air ripping at it's seams before jumping back from Klarradi's attempted stomping axe-kick.

_"For now I just have to stay away from her fists!" _ thought Chad making to charge up a blast.

_"I don't know how or why he survived, but this ends here," _thought Klarradi seeing Chad's next actions coming and proactively rotated her entire body, making to whip her large tail into him for greater range. Chad, who was already a step ahead by dodging her previous attack, made to dodge this rapid action by jerking to the tail's right, and succeeded, only to be hit by numerous impacts anyways. This multi-impact astonished him as he was forced upwards, blasting through quartz-tree branches only to meet a sonídoed Klarradi's tail now actually physically slamming into his left side.

The difference of impact force with now physical contact was stark as he was sent aerially careening 180° for quite a distance. As the marsupial adjuchas jumped ahead of Chad's flight path on branches with sonído, she made to intercept it and do a final spin-slam motion with her tail, but Chad expertly snatched it with his right arm causing alarm to the adjuchas.

The boy grabbed and swung the hollow down to the ground with such extreme force that she wasn't able to control her fall, and this was made even more difficult due to the energy blast that had been fired directly after he released her from his grip.

The blast actually overtook her and pushed her down even faster, crashing through quartz tree branches before hitting the forest floor in a massive detonation. Chad, who still had aerial momentum from Klarradi's prior attack, had managed to horizontally land against a tree and jump off of it down to lower branches as the explosion went off.

Jumping down into the dust and smoke caused by the blast, it quickly dissipated, leaving Chad kneeling on one knee upon landing in the middle of a crater. Standing up and looking around, his eyes could barely narrow in suspicion before a great force slammed on top of and crumpled his body flat onto the ground. The force continuously lifted and pounded him further at speeds almost indistinguishable from individual impacts before a final impact hit with enough force to create a depression inside the already present crater as the depression actually outgrew crater confines, creating a larger and drastically steeper one. The entire attack was something like a-

"Martillo mecánico Pisotón(Jackhammer Stomp)," came Klarradi speaking generally while landing back on the ground due to the force of the impact pushing her off of it. "You're through. No mere human skeleton system can sustain tha-AH!" she shouted as a facedown Chad abruptly grabbed her tail with his left hand and while rolling over, and yanked her to the ground as if closing the blinds. Meeting her on the ground mid-roll, he hammerfist-slammed her with an explosive energy blast sending her tunneling through ground into the steep crater wall sub-foundation.

"I already told you," began Chad standing up and brushing himself off, "There's nothing 'mere' about humans."

At this Klarradi instantly erupted from the caved in crater wall, actually grabbing Chad's right arm with her tail and yanking it to the side, tossing him up in the air and shooting a cero after him in the same fashion as Chad had shot a blast after her previously. But always cool under pressure, Chad used such a situation to actually innovate with his arm, frugally shooting a weak pulse of energy off his arm; purposely enough to just push himself out the way of the oncoming cero. As long as he got out the way, it didn't really matter by how much right? Dodging the not even full-power cero allowed him a dual-purpose of aerially reorienting himself, back-flipping and landing on a quartz tree branch.

The effects her tail had demonstrated never left his mind, not to mention his recent near vibratory pummeling in the crater.

"So I see your Gritandos Puños(Screaming Fists) ability is a misleading name. You can move _any _part of your body at mach speeds to create shockwaves, not just your fists," began Chad to a pensive Klarradi, "But the strength of your hits rely on your attack speed and shockwaves, compared to I who can punch strongly even without my energy blasts," concluded Chad standing up.

"You talk big, you really do. But you're missing one minor detail. It's nothing important really," began Klarradi with her hand offhandedly in the air as a brown cero began charging in front of it.

_"Another cero?" _thought Chad. This was the third one so far after dodging the second one. "I'll make sure you don't hit me with the same attack twice," responded Chad in a valiant voice beginning to charge up a blast.

Nearly finished charging Klarradi was bemused to say the least. "Ohoho now stop it you! Not only will the same attack hit you twice," began the adjuchas as she to Chad's surprise abruptly sonído'd to a branch near the canopy before her voice did a 'one-eighty' changing completely sinister, "It'll hit you more then ten times faster, **Cero Hiper**."

As the syllable '-per' left her mouth, Chad was simultaneously engulfed in the familiar energy of a Cero with no time to even realize he was. The literally screaming beam rocketed from Klarradi's closed fist in a flash, bifurcating a series of adjacent standing giant quartz trees from sheer velocity and captured the entire prevailing area in a resultant explosion as multitudes of shock-waves flowed up to the canopy.

_"You gained arrogance after managing to last as much as five minutes against me. Perhaps rightfully so coming from a human of course. Heh. But that overconfidence led to your demise. Forget complying as a prisoner, you weren't even able to be made use of as baby food,_" thought Klarradi looking down in her marsupial pouch as the smoke began to rise, _"What a let-down!" _she finished mentally and hopped down the series of branches from the canopy down the the epicenter of the explosion now on the forest floor waiting for the dust to clear.

Although the short battle had taken place within the part of the Menos Forest claimed and not leveled by El Centro like the rest it of apparently had, it was still the forest nonetheless. So it was appropriate that Klarradi's blast had created a sort of "clearing" as all the quartz trees had been leveled and split trunks lay fell. The dust finally cleared out of the epicenter of the great explosion which once was the location of the quartz tree on whose branch Chad had stood on. Gradually it became fully visible.

_"WHAT!? NO WAY! B-BUT HO-" _mentally stuttered Klarradi at the new sight. Chad lay on the ground flat on his back. His navy blue shirt with the golden styling on the shoulder had been completely vaporized along with his undershirt. The top layer of his skin fared no better. His semi-messy hair was now wild, his mouth agape and pressed against the forest floor, and there was a blank facial expression along with similarly vacant eyes.

Most notably his right arm had dematerialized. Now this was serious. Never before had that happened. Not when Yammy had crushed and nearly snapped it in two, not even when Tsubaki had spliced it clean off earlier this morning; neither the severed limb, nor the portion still attached had dematerialized then; and now this.

The marsupial adjuchas sonído'd over to Chad's prone form taking in the sight up close as if she would see some sort of explanation for whatever her confusion was about.

"I-I just don't understand," she began aloud, probing him with her long lean-muscled marsupial tail; the slumbering joey in her pouch stirring silently, "He's dead but there's no plus soul? And my Cero Hiper should've easily _completely_ vaporized him...—NO! Forget that! My **_normal _**cero should've done _that_! He's just a human Klarradi, a human...and yet...-tch! I'll finish this right now! Out of sight out of mind!" she shouted, outstretching her arm and charging one last cero, with the energy that was generating blowing Chad's hair a little.

As the larger adjuchas made to fire a suddenly materialized right arm of Chad infused with fresh bluish-white energy as if on cue instantly grabbed and pushed her hand towards her mask as the cero along with his own energy blast were released in tandem going right up to the bottom of the mask.

Yet another explosion rang out in El Centro within the newly created clearing. It forced Chad back, tumbling backwards the length of a tennis court, but he quickly gained traction in his hands and feet mid-tumble. The boy quickly righted himself and stood up to see that his opponent had flown and been forcibly smashed back-first into a quartz tree, creating a sizable dent having taken the brunt of the combined attack and Chad merely the recoil of only Klarradi's cero.

The mother adjuchas fell out of the dent, landing and crouching down on her knees, slowly rising back up to reveal a slightly concaved mask at the chin.

"Man, it's like I thought. You mask really is unbreakable. But still it looks a little more warped than before," began Chad aloud to Klarradi's uncharacteristic silence. Reality had to pinch itself to confirm that the conversation was actually happening that way and not the other way around. _Chad_, a conversational initiator?

"I thought I had you figured out only for you to pull something else out of nowhere. I couldn't even process what you said earlier before I was already trapped in the blast. What did you call it?" asked Chad getting up on his knees with a grunt. "'Cero Hiper'?" he finished as he now stood fully erect.

"A 'Hyper Cero' huh? To think that it's not just your limbs, but even a Cero that can by effected by your ability," continued Chad looking around at the pure destruction of the area, _"It was a normal cero, but the speed made it so much more powerful. incredible...," _finished Chad mentally as he brushed himself off, noting with satisfaction that his Abuelo's coin-medallion was still intact as always.

"ENOUGH!" shouted Klarradi after building up the gumption, "I've done multiple attacks that would've destroyed any human, reiatsu-having or not! So why won't you just keel over already?"

"Hmm," grunted Chad in response, "Is it just me or did you just underestimate humans for the third time? As for that last question, 'Why won't I just keel over already?' continued Chad seemingly doing some form of vocal imitation of Klarradi in his deep voice. It seemed very un-Chad-like, but then again one can't be sure of that's even what he was trying to do. On second thought, maybe that was just a generic 'quoting' voice. We'll never know with Chad.

"The thing is," he began, answering the adjuchas's question, "That it's physically impossible for me to do that kind of thing right now."

This brought untainted confusion to the face under Klarradi's mask, and she, a being like Zoréno, didn't take well to such; albeit she was more calm, reasonable and patient about it than the goldenrod simian-adjuchas. But this instance just sort of made her uncharacteristically snap.

"WHAT?!" she screamed in her contralto voice.

Her confusion throughout the entire morning was now adding up and expunging itself and Chad seemed to get the message as he made sure to set things straight right upon speaking.

"Sorry. That I seem to have gotten you so worked up since it seems like you'd normally be the level-headed type," he started to Klarradi's surprise before he put on an introspective look, "It's just that ever since I've been in Hueco Mundo I-no—_things _have been 'different'," he began, getting his words together while emphasizing the last one.

"Up before Inoue and I got negacióned, we'd been sparring together before defeating the squad of hollows sent from this base to capture human souls, which is what triggered the Negación in the first place," circularly continued Chad, "But since waking up in the cell in that Segunda Cárcel place, even while Inoue was still unconscious, I felt this 'different' sensation coming from inside me.* It was my power and what felt like the very energy keeping me alive. It felt...it felt different than what up to that point I'd always perceived as 'normal' when I was in the living world and the Soul Society," continued Chad.

_"The Soul Society?!"_

"The fact is that I'd never experienced any different feeling until that moment of waking up in the cell that confused me, and...it still does. It's like some kind of paradigm shift happened between the short while fighting in the living world to that moment in the cell, and there's only one way to describe this 'difference'," continued Chad emphasizing the last word yet again as his spiritual pressure rose, actually enveloping him in visible a bluish-white aura.

"It's unrest!" finished Chad as the fledgling aura expunged outward in all directions as a wave of pressure . No longer could 'explosive yet refined' describe his reiatsu...now it was simply wild...unrefined.

"My power has unrest within it as if I've lost my grasp on it and it's alien to me," explained Chad, "Up to now I've been trying to ignore it or find some way to understand or control it," he said, remembering once more the session on the desert with putting his hand at the sand and observing the ripples it created. "But the moment our fists first clashed in front of everybody and the fight started, the unrest and anxiety escalated and got worse. Even now," continued Chad as his reiatsu crested in a sudden burst before going back to the unrefined waves, "It's like something I never experienced," he finished as his right arm trembled ever so slightly.

"So now you get why when you said 'just keel over' as if I would just gently fall on the ground in some _restful_ slumber—you get why I said it's impossible in all sense of the word. Because as long as I have this constantly rising _unrest_, no matter what you do to me, I'll always get back up and the more I'm attacked by you and the more we fight, the more _restless _I become!" finished Chad to a listening Klarradi. She kept silent after he finished before looking down in acquiescence.

"Ah...yes," she began cryptically before looking back up with a pitying gaze, "I think I understand you now Yasutora Sado," she admitted before evenly raising her voice, "What a tragic creature you are! Cursed by your own abnormal vitality; like someone unable to feel pain, they keep getting more and more injured and don't realize it until they die on the spot with their body literally too damaged to sustain any life. But you claim even at that point you'll still rise yet again and continue to fight? So you think this 'unrest' makes you stronger? In that case," she continued, charging a cero.

_"Another cero?!"_

"The only way to deal with the issue of your constant lingering is to take care of you all at once so there's nothing left to get back up! It's that simple!"

_"There's no energy difference between the two so I can't tell if it's 'hyper' or not!"_ thought Chad as the blast fired, _"It's normal!" _he thought managing to dodge by jumping all the way to the edge of the crater as the cero exploded further back before focusing back on his opponent.

_"Wait where'd she go?!"_ he thought before instinctively snapping his neck up, seeing Klarradi descending in slow motion in her familiar 'Jackhammer' stomping form except now a cero was coalescing at her feet, preparing to be stomped down at mach speeds in a combined attack. Out of pure impulse with no time to charge up an attack or even think of doing do, Chad jumped backwards out of the attack path, and in still what seemed like surreal slow motion, jumped up at the diagonal angle to the taller adjuchas's height and uppercut Klarradi mid-attack right in the previously injured concave area of her mask. What Chad failed to notice was her lack of eye movement during this sequence, proving the she didn't even see it coming before she was sent flying while her unfinished cero imploded in a sloppy mess. From the impact she had started to fly, traveling only half a meter before she and her seemingly imploded cero began flickering and buzzing.

_"STATIC!" _mentally yelled Chad not as a question or statement, but an observation as time seemed to slow down again, and he intuitively pivoted to the right out the way of a horizontally stomping from behind Klarradi who fired her lightning fast Cero Hiper. For an attack that seemed to last an instant, it was as if now it was paradoxically going normal cero speed in this slow motion sequence as Chad finally completed his pivot, slamming the back of his fist into horizontally traveling Klarradi's incoming mask as the two body parts met up with each other. This time the hit was real as the motion of the adjuchas abruptly reversed as time returned back to normal.

Careening and gaining control of her destroyed momentum, Klarradi backward somersaulted and landed on all four limbs; five if you count her tail. The concave dent had been strikingly enlarged by the last two hits alone.

"What happened?" asked stone face shirtless skin-charred Chad with an energy blast already charged up. He was calmly ambling across the two city-block distance now between the two, emphasized by the previously formed crater of Klarradi's first Cero Hiper. With no giant quartz trees in its way, the more recent Cero Hiper had flown at super speeds perhaps to the north of the base past the Menos-Fence section that connected her gaol and Xodri's. Yet the far-off explosion still caused a subtle tremble.

"Did you get slower?" he continued, starting to close the distance between them.

_"And now he's on some power-trip? He saw through my first stomp-cero combo and somehow managed to dodge and attack so I tricked him with **Estático**, but he managed to react in time and see through** **Eco**** at the last moment too! What just happened?!" _questioned Klarradi aggressively getting up off all fours and up on her knees to face the approaching Chad.

_"His speed somehow dramatically increased as much as his reiatsu. I could've sworn he used sonído, but no! It wasn't! There was no technique to it! It was only fast movement and nothing more. Besides, I don't know what all his powers can do...maybe brute fast movement is part of i—tch! It doesn't matter! There's no way he can actually dodge a Cero Hiper. So far, he's only managed to get out the way right before I actually fire. So all I have to do is hold him in place with the right 'Cero-Artesa—'"_

**KAZOOOOOOOOOUUUOOOM!**

Poor Klarradi's thought process was shattered as a gargantuan ray of cero energy erupted right underneath the ground in front of her, stretching in surface area all the way about one and three-fourths city blocks right to where Chad was just about to innocently take his next step. As quickly as it appeared, it had rocketed upwards to the canopy, piercing up to the desert.

"Wha-what-the?!" To say Chad was momentarily shaken up was an understatement.

_"Tha-that was Zory's—Zoréno's trump card!"_ thought Klarradi managing to break out of her nickname for the simian adjuchas, _"Why would he use that against someone like Tarragó? More importantly, what's Celvia up to as well?!"_

Normally, any individual spiritual pressure was impossible to single out from La Basurinera because of all the "hollow stock" down there and Zoréno's attack now made it even more impossible to figure out what was going on. Once again in a similar vein to the primate adjuchas yet in her own unique way, a lack of knowledge or understanding was something she couldn't stand. Abruptly she got up off her knees to face the still dumbstruck human.

"Looks like the battles are starting to finish up! I never wanted this to last long! It's gone on long enough!" she began yelling across the new giant steaming dark sink hole, snapping Chad out of his stupor, "Some friends of mine will be coming up that hole any minute now! Tarragó must've really irked Zoréno for him to pull _that _out since normally he and Celvia're the type to drag fights out and play with their food, _unlike_ me. So consider what I'm about to do a favor! This battle is closer to being over than you'd like to think!" she shouted, channeling visibly brown spiritual pressure about her being.

_"So this is it huh?"_ observed Chad, _"I may be getting stronger, and I don't know why but I can keep up with her speed a little better now, or at least I could for that one moment. But she's still faster, and even with the hits I've gotten, none of them have been able to be full power because of the speed I have to attack in order to land a hit. And she's given out much more damage than I've given to her," _rationalized Chad.

He knew his advantage was his physical strength. It always had been. If he could only just land a _full _power punch on her most vulnerable area! Common sense would say it's her mask, but he'd been hitting her mask as much as he could and not even a fracture.

_"Isn't that supposed to be a hollow's weak spot?! I actually doubt full power would make that much of a difference,"_ thought Chad at a loss, _"It just seems like the answer is so obvious, but I can't grasp it...just like how I can't grasp how my power is now,"_ continued Chad anxiously clutching his punch-ready right arm with his left hand, _"It's still gradually rising...like it has a mind of it's own.."_

He watched on as Klarradi finished seemingly releasing the full extent of her spiritual pressure causing the joey to sort of shudder mid-slumber. As the massive newly formed hole was now in between their distance of almost two city blocks length-wise and even more so for the width of the hole, Chad grunted and leaped from the ground to the surrounding quartz trees around the perimeter. He jumped from branch to branch in a desperate effort to reach the mother hollow.

_"Ha. And just what's that supposed to be? Where's that speed from before human?"_

_"Why is she just standing there?" _thought Chad jumping to the final tree as the adjuchas revealed her tail from behind, finishing what was undoubtedly going to be a Cero Hiper if the previously seen whipping speed of her tail was anything to go by.

_"!? She can fire them from ther-!" _was the only thing Chad's brain could muster while jumping from the final branch right to his opponent as she jutted her tail like a rapier at mach speeds, firing the blast. That's when those last thoughts of Chad were interrupted as nearly simultaneously he was bathed once more in the familiar radiation of the cero.

Time again nearly came ringing to a halt. Yet all pain was somehow that much more drawn out in the scaled down time perception. There was ringing around his ears, his already mutilated skin was now beginning to disintegrate over his body. There was no escape. All surrounding Chad was the color of the Cero, as if he were in a vacuum, a void of brown; dephthless. And right then, death was able to be tasted.

It's said a soul can reach their highest potential in the face of death. It was time for him to prove that theory for the third time in the past two months.

The ghost-like aura that had exhumed from him earlier re-manifested in the form of a now highly concentrated silhouette. Almost like a full body armor of his familiar bluish-white reiatsu. The cero had already pushed him back mid-flight about ten meters in the past quarter of a second so that his feet were once again pressed on the branch he'd jumped from. With pure force and all his energy, he launched from the branch, destroying it, literally rocketing down _through_ the Cero Hiper, popping out at the source with a full power energy-blast and tackle-punching Klarradi into the ground casing it to erupt around them.

Poor kangaroo didn't know what hit her.

In a mere third of a second after firing her fastest and most powerful attack and hitting her target completely, she found herself on the receiving end of the most blunt force ever and at such speed that she couldn't comprehend until she came to, about ten seconds later to various feelings. First, the feeling of her belly being pressed into on the ground by something. Second, the sound of earth raining down and the feeling of hot copper flavored plasma running up her throat and expelling itself out her mask which also happened to be missing more than a few of its teeth.

"G-GAACK!"

Chad heard the noise come from Klarradi as he rose to stand up and look down at his opponent. Earlier she'd explained just how her mach punches could produce shockwaves, allowing her to punch non-physically from a distance, but that the "entire point" of her ability was to actually still hit her opponent physically so that they would sustain both the physical hit(whose power was increased by speed), and the resulting shockwaves simultaneously for maximum damage versus simply punching normally or solely generating shockwaves from a distance. And lastly she'd compared her ability analogously to Chad's right arm's relationship with its energy blasts.

Well then in that case, for the first time this entire battle, Chad had now been able to fulfill the "entire point" of _his_ ability; to land at full strength a physical punch with his right arm so that his opponent would sustain the physical punch(whose power was increased due to his materialized armor), and to infuse that same punch with a full power energy blast in the same attack for maximum damage versus shooting the blasts off from a distance or punching without the blasts at all.

"I couldn't find a way to damage you with your mask barely taking damage from everything I and even you yourself threw at it," said Chad referencing his making Klarradi hit her mask with her cero and his blast, "So I just decided to hit you as hard as I could. I guess my direct approach still works," he finished, now referencing Orihime's opinion of his battle tactics.

He now looked down at the spot where his hit landed. It was right above the joey's head, and it left a caved in dent that penetrated deep into now crushed muscle and organ tissue. The massive dent seemed to be permanent or at least wasn't filling in any time soon as if you could pump air into it to do so.

"H-how?" spoke the mother hollow rapsily, snapping Chad out the daze he was falling into, "How did you..my...attack? I...clearly hit you! Guh!" she winced before taking in a torturous breath. "How did your speed increase so much?" she asked in a gasping weakened contralto voice as she began fidgeting and clutching at her mask.

Chad look nonplused at this display. "Hm. It's only natural. I was about to die so I guess my body adapted to the situation. It's the defense mechanism of any soul, living, or dead. It was that, and a little bit of luck I guess," concluded Chad, _"The only consequence is my energy is drained. Shielding from that Hyper Cero while charging right into it did a number on me," _thought Chad stumbling to keep balance. Unlike his prior deception, his arm had actually de-materialized authentically this time; though at the same time, it's not like he fought to keep it from doing so.

"But it's good that it turned out this way. Now you can answer our questions. All the ones we had before the fights began. Why are you sending hollows to the human world to capture random human souls? Why were Inoue and I then considered 'prime targets' for our spiritual pressure if that wasn't what the original search called for? Why are you capturing hollows as well and even the shinigami Ashido Kanō wasn't off the list of acceptable things to catch. What is this 'organization's'—if I can call it that—aim? And lastly, what is this 'headquarters' you're planning to 'ship' everyone t-"

"You..f..oool," the voice came out in a near whisper as the adjuchas continued clutching her mask.

_"What?"  
><em>

"no...no...nO...No...NO...no..NOOOOOOOO! Look what you've done to me! You've youuu've dooom-!" shouted the marsupial adjuchas as if trying to say something while now convulsing in seizure-like movements.

Remember before when Chad was nonplused at her fidgeting just a little bit ago? Well unlike then, he was currently now very 'plused'. This behavior from her wasn't simply due to injury.

"What's wrong-Wh-what are you talking abou-"

**"RoooOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAH!"**

It was all Chad heard. A deep terrifying cry that shockingly came from the joey hollow itself! Chad only just realized how much more damaged it's mask was compared to it's apparent mother's. It's eyes burst open revealing glowing red irises versus the normal golden ones of a hollow. At this eye-opening, horrible spiritual pressure burst anew from Klarradi's body, causing Chad to jump back out of the impact zone created from his attack only for Klarradi's body in an unnaturally fast jerkish movement to kip-up and grab Chad's neck with both hands at mach speed and raise him off the ground from his elevated position on the crater edge, back down to eye-level with the joey in Klarradi's pouch. The height of Klarradi's body allowed her to be standing _within_ the impact zone and still be able to reach it's target.

The juvenile hollow now looked particularly livid and horrifying while Klarradi looked comatose with her head limp.

**"YOU HURT MAMA!" **shouted the uncharacteristically deep inhuman bone rattling voice of the joey hollow to the still in shock and uncomprehending Chad.

**"NOW MAMA CAN'T FEED MEEEEE!" **it continued as Klarradi's hands strangled his neck, burning into his neck with pure reiatsu with a classic hollow burn like the one given to him by the serial killer hollow "Shrieker" who terrorized Shibata when he was stuck in the parakeet.

More energy than ever before exhumed off of Klarradi's and the joey's body together.

_"Feed!? Y-Yeah she talked about feeding it earlier but what's going-!"_

Chad's panicked thoughts crashed as he saw the joey collecting energy in front of it's mouth followed by Klarradi's eyes bursting open, revealing now matching red irises to the joey's as energy began slowly collecting in front of her mask as well.

_"No..."  
><em>  
>Slowly the energy in front of both hollows coalesced into orbs and powerful electric-like sparks slowly began connecting the two orbs as they reacted intensely with one another and moved ever closer together, reacting more and more as if they had electromagnetic fields with a love-hate relationship. Oh, was it mentioned that Chad also struggled to breath from the ever <em>burning<em> vicegrip on his neck all while he hung above the ground from said grip? But suddenly he had a startling realization or an "interpretation" anyways. He went thought a sort of rambling stream of consciousness no doubt effected by his growing lack of air.

_"This..just like mine...this is her own defense mechanism! I injured her to the point that now she's forced to draw on her actual life-force to fight back and put it all in one attack...but this reiatsu and this cero...it feels like she or it or they, whatever they are, aren't just drawing on it, but actually putting their entire life force into it...As...As if this is some uncontrolled knee-jerk reaction...Then there's the fact that...that baby hollow seems to actually be in control or at least was until the main one opened her eyes. I can't tell...and even so it's much more complex than that, I know...I probably haven't even scratched the surface so I don't get their connection at...all but I know...if I don't stop this,...then not just me, but probably half the base'll be vaporized. And...that's just if they don't make this a 'hyper'. Can they fire a 'hyper' from their masks? She used..her limbs before to...do them. I'd rather not...take the chance," _thought an oxygen deprived Chad.

Barely drawing on non-existent scarce reserves, he attempted re-materializing his arm as the black liquid took it's time crawling over his arm and then acted as if it was thinking a while before deciding to finally harden. He knew he had to charge a full power blast again, but- _"All...energy...used in...last attack,"_ he thought beginning to get dizzy, energy sluggishly gathering in his fist, _"So slow...at this..rate...,"_ he thought as the two sparkling ceros nearly finished combining in the shape of an intimate helix. And as soon as Chad's energy began gathering, it started fizzling out as he began to _black out_.

Color and brightness of the mind comes from a collection of influences, re-arranged and re-assembled by an individuals interpretation of them. Before these influences, in actuality it's dark inside everyone's head by default. Their mind, their conscious? All void. And Chad was no different as he drifted in the vacuum.

_"This whole fight...I've been too slow...,"_ he thought as past conversation passed through his mind. Where Klarradi had spoken of how his punches were powerful yet slow while hers were efficient and fast. Had he really finally managed to land a full power hit only for it to end like _this_? _"...Like this...?" _Chad's voice echoed in the darkness of his own mind.

"... ... ..."

_**"NO!" **_he shouted anew as a familiar white light illuminated the darkness.

_"I've managed to match her 'agility speed' as the fight went on and NOW,"_ he thought as his eyes opened to reality, revealing them to be lit blue by reitsu, his right arm brim with pure bluish-white energy from fist to shoulder only for the arm to then glow only a pure white that matched the inside of his mind as he moved to begin cocking it back.

It seemed Chad had blacked out for a couple seconds as now seemingly mindless Klarradi and the joey had already done a combined hollow roar together and made the motion to fire their now unified and stable blast. Klarradi's body during his black-out had apparently switched from the vicegrip to a tail grip on his neck as both hollows raised their both their arms as if to use all four limbs to punch the 'life-force' cero into the ultimate hyper attack.

Finally for the last time that fight, time slowed down once more. It seemed the cero would fire any moment; there was not much movement needed to fire a cero from the mouth after all. Yet it seemed once more this would instead be a battle of fists. Yes, this entire match he'd risen from being outclassed speed wise to actually keeping up apparently due to the 'unrest' of his own power. But once again in this very moment, his actual punching speed was proving to be a liability; or so it seemed as he continued his thoughts.

_"I've matched her 'agility speed' and NOW,"_ he went on continuing off from his previous thoughts, _"It's time to surpass her 'punching speed'!"_ he finished, only just thrusting his glowing pure white energy-blast powered arm forward as the joey and Klarradi's fists were already almost at their charging sphere of crackling cero energy. He imitated with his reiatsu the same way he'd felt the Rikka wielder's convulse when she'd done the very attack he both partially thought and yelled out next with the last small breath in his lungs, _"Hado 1:"_

"SHŌ!" he yelled.

But even the amount of time it took to yell that was more than enough time as the hyper blast had already began consuming him. The world became saturated with brown.

Before it faded to white.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started on paper: April 15th, 2012 5:03 P.M. est  
>Chapter Finished on paper:(cont to next chapter)<br>Chapter Typed: August 30th, 2012 3:04 P.M.-September 1, 2012, 8:35 P.M. est  
>Revisions: September 16th, 2012, 4:23 P.M. est-November 25th, 2012, 3:00 P.M. est<strong>

*I referenced this in chapter thirteen. Know that little details always show up later.

Ok Inb4 all the readers kill me for ending the chapter like that. Especially HMMaster, try not to deadpan _too_hard from that ending. And before any of you judge anything, just wait to read more chapters so you can look back in retrospect. All I can say is it'd be wise not to make any assumptions based off of this chapter. Plus, not lying on this one, but I did hint this ending would happen all the way back in in chapter seven in a insider reference type of way. I don't pull things out of nowhere. Like I said above, little details always show up later.

The chapter title "Insomniac" is self-explanatory? Or not? Tell me what you think.

Quote: "This battle is closer to over than you'd like to think!"  
>-What an ironic quote.<p>

Quote: "..._So all I have to do is hold him in place with the right 'Cero-Artesa—'"  
><em>-If only she could've finished her sentence. Good thing she didn't because you know...spoilers and all.

Techniques used and revealed:

-Cola Lamentado(Spanish for: "Wailing Tail"): An technique usable due to her **Gritandos Puños**(Screaming Fists) ability. Basically she can whip her tail at speeds that create shockwaves as well, along with any other part of her body. This is what it's called when she uses her tail(no she doesn't have a separate name for each limb besides her fists, ha). It was unnamed in the chapter.

-Cero Hiper(Hyper Cero): Moving any part of her body at mach speed to fire a cero. The blast goes around ten times faster than normal.

-Martillo mecánico Pisotón(Jackhammer Stomp): Stomps both feet down repeatedly at mach speeds and in a way likened to a jackhammer.

-Hiper martillo mecánico Pisotón(Hyper Jackhammer Stomp): Combines the 'hyper cero' and the 'jackhammer stomp'. Klarradi has a cero charge up under both her feet and stomps them down with the cero underneath, for a physical impact at mach speeds with the jackhammer stomp, actually hopping away with only the first stomp to escape the recoil. It was attempted in the chapter, but wasn't named.

Tech Refresher:

_**'Modo de Sonído Engañosa # 1 Eco, & #2 _**Estático**_  
><strong>(Way of Deceptive Sound #1 Echo, & #2 Static)_


	23. Hallucinogen

I seem to recall some people wanting the translation of Ashido's zan? Well read the chapter!**  
><strong>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. That is all.  
>(122/12)By now you've long since known about when the hiatus will start. If not, check my profile. There are more details there as well.

* * *

><p>Hallucinogen<br>-

**September 10th**

**8:46.20 A.M. Now it's Ashido's turn! Just what is his zanpakutō's power?!**

"Breathe, **Kamokuen**(寡黙煙, _Reticent Fume_)**!**" shouted the lost shinigami as his abrupt explosion of spiritual pressure expanded in all directions from where he was standing, destroying the Enkōsen spell in the process and forcing even basaltic Díañolo to momentarily brace himself before he looked back up at the new sight.

The shinigami's sealed zanpakutō had formerly been katana-like in style with a beige diamond design-adorned green hilt and matching rectangular beige tsuba that was chipped as if it'd been damaged. But the weapon in the shinigami's hand now was of a different breed having transformed into a nagamaki-like weapon. The blade was a little long for it to be a nagamaki, going just a little shorter than a wakizashi's blade and even had a yokote which wasn't impossible for it to have, just more rare for that type of weapon.

The thing was, it soon was impossible to properly inspect the blade due to the billows of yellow tinted grey gas that began coming off the it as if it were a heavily smoking piece of firewood.

"Wow, through figurin' out my abilities you said?" began gravely voiced Díañolo anew while standing on the quartz tree branch above, "So that means you're ready to die then? Huh," he stated at the end rather than questioned, as if put-off.

"Just that I was expectin' some more fun ya' know?" he asked amused, passively throwing his hands up, "But then again it's always convenient when meals actually season themselves," he taunted jumping from the branch and landing on the scorched steaming ground where Cero Combinación had blasted Ashido earlier. As the largest out of all the adjuchas, his height was truly imposing with Ashido barely coming past his knees; and his mass even more so.

"Well technically judging by your spirit stick there, it looks like you're over there smoking yourself, and smoked meat is pretty good too!" finished the steaming adjuchas looking down at the shinigami predatorally.

With Abdul and now this guy, Ashido was silently wondering if bad humor was starting to become a 'thing' among adjuchas as he swung his smoking nagamaki-like sword from it's release position right at Díañolo as a wave of the smog-gases flew out from his sword.

On instinct the adjuchas simply sonído'd out the way up to the same branch from which he'd descended as the ambiguous smog-wave hit the quartz trunk and dissipated into the air.

The dirty air traveled up to his nostrils as he scrunched his nose behind his rocky mask.

"What was that 'sposed to be shinigami?" he questioned looking down where the attack impacted the trunk, "Throwin' weak smoke at me won't-" he began before realizing the soul reaper was gone, _"Where'd he-!?"  
><em>

"Up here," came the simple answer to Díañolo's thoughts as the gazelle masked shinigami was revealed to be on an adjacent tree branch as another smog wave had already made its way to him, actually hitting him with concussive force and knocking him off the tree branch so that he crashed into the still steaming ground.

The smog lingered and fused with the steam, billowing up from the crash site as Ashido simply observed his work. Suddenly a shadow moved rapidly with the rising gas as if getting up.

"You didn't let me finish my first question shinigami; 'How is throwing weak smoke at me," repeated the adjuchas, "supposed to do anything?!'" he finished as his trademark spiritual pressure simply erupted, causing the thick smog to immediately dissipate. "Look! Just being in my presence makes your power flee!" he taunted, looking directly up at Ashido as he began charging another Cero Empíreos in front of his mask.

"And now!" he shouted, shockingly rolling up into a ball taking his fledgling specialized Cero with him, "It's time for the owner of the power to flee as well!" he finished within his ball form as he jerked forward, using the mineral crystalline structures that adorned his body as traction as the ball rushed toward to trunk and actually began climbing the tree with no change in speed. The ball quickly began to steam and glow from the growing cero within, causing a luminescence to overtake his mineral-crystal appendages. In a mere two seconds the ball had reached that same first branch he'd been knocked from.

Meanwhile on the adjacent quartz tree about six or so branches up, Ashido was seemingly observing. Analyzing with an apparent calm demeanor behind his emotionless gazelle mask.

_"What the heck just happened!"_ thought Ahsido breaking assumed character, still taking in that his opponent had so abruptly rolled up into a spiked ball before said glowing ball proved it had been luring Ashido into a false sense of security. As it actually _sonído'd_ after passing the first branch, coming right up to him, crashing and melting through the first five branches on contact with no slow-down in speed.

Suddenly Díañolo came to a momentum-annihilating halt before he found himself impaled around by six different objects, suspending him in mid-air, trapping him in his ball form. Ashido had acted quickly; creating a static Enkōsen spell at his feet due to the entirety of his tree branch melting, then taking a page out of Orihime's book and using incantationless Sai and then in the same subsecond that Sai would last before being shaken off, casted Bakudō #61. Rikujōkōrō(Six Rods Prison of Light), thus suspending the glowing time-bomb that was Díañolo in mid-air right under the branch.

He knew the adjuchas had either been attempting to mutilate him with the exhuming heat by crashing into him while in that ball form, or most likely release his charging Cero Empíreos point blank, or both. But now the adjuchas could no longer release his cero and it was too late to stably power it down with such an abrupt halt in momentum. It was surprising he hadn't lost control right around his mid-air halting. And Ashido could tell he had actually made to release it right before he'd been stopped by the Sai-Rikujōkōrō combo, making it even more difficult to power down. It's like taking a full cup of water and jerking it forward before pulling it back in an attempt to keep water from spilling out of it. And yet Díañolo had managed to do just that for the moment, but the thing is, jerking the cup back consequently gives the water even more inertia in the opposite direction.

The adjuchas was growling in anxiety as the steam and heat exhuming from his being grew exponentially.

"Isn't it strange? That _you_ now wish to flee from your _own _power?" said Ashido bringing his opponent's taunt back to him in spades while standing atop a motionless Enkōsen above the melting tree branch. Suddenly the gravely adjuchas's growls became frantic before they morphed into an outburst.

"Y-YOU THINK THIS CAN HOLD MEEEEEEEE!?" he shouted in the same booming voice he had used to yell across the forest during Ashido's tactical momentary escape earlier. His straining to break out the spell caused him to raise his trademark reiatsu much to the detriment of poor Rikujōkōrō, to which Ashido simply chanted,

**"Carriage of thunder, bridge of a spinning wheel. With light, divide this into six!" **he shouted as formerly incantationless Rikujōkōrō got a boost power and regenerated only to begin melting away again yet slower. But per Ashido's insight, the last outburst of Díañolo's reiatsu caused him to momentarily loose focus of trying to power down his superheated cero at the same time.

"GYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

BOOOM!

An ultraheated explosion and shockwave caused by Cero Empíreos swamped the prevailing area bringing with it a flash of light as if from the split second before an asteroid impact. Ashido had sunpo'd four trees back and halfway toward the canopy as he saw the obscenely steaming figure of Díañolo now out of his ball form, spiraling back to the ground.

Taking his eternally smoking zanpakutō Kamokuen and pointing downwards he uttered a single phrase,

"**Enryū** (Smogstream)."

Rather than a wave or psuedo-tendril of the gas being produced like before in his wordless sword swipes, now a condensed almost pressurized spinning torrent of it shot out from Kamokuen like a ray of energy, blasting Díañolo mid-fall and instantly smashing him all the way to the ground with concussive force. The concentrated ray exploded upon ground collision in an expanding wave as the entire area was filled with a backdrop of smoggy yellow-tinted grey haze. Quickly, he shunpo'd down to the ground, standing a decimeter from Díañolo's head where he lay on the ground which was cracked from impact and made to do a killing blow.

Instantly the adjuchas rolled up into a sitting position before rolling backwards further into his ball form, sonído'ing backwards and then landing on the ground back in normal bipedal form. He looked at his "opponent" the shinigami, still wearing that stupid mask on his face as if it were a trophy, along with the others on his back.

He probably felt like he had the upper hand just because of this momentary rally of his, standing there in smug silence. Suddenly a thought came to the scorched adjuchas, _"Why isn't he affected by my reiatsu?!" _he shouted mentally as it set him off in an unnatural rage, even for him. What started as a malevolent throaty growl turned into the familiar deathly cry of a hollow as the adjuchas's rage emanated and once more evaporated the haze around the entire area.

"I TOLD YOU, your gas is NOTHING! How can it possibly do damage to anyone? And to me of all people whose reiatsu naturally counters yours _and_ your ability! I've joked around up to now, but no more playing around! It's time to show you my true-hck! HHH! ARCKH!" went Díañolo falling into a few sudden violent coughs.

"Oh?" questioned gazelle-masked Ashido. "So the delayed effect is finally taking place," he spoke, quoting nearly the exact words of Díañolo just a while earlier; something the still gagging adjuchas didn't miss as he went wide-eyed.

"What're GUH- you taarlkin' about!?" he strained.

"Be silent, keep calm and observe," began Ashido raising Kamokuen back up as energy began coalescing at it's tip, "Bakudō 21: Shimesu aka sekienton (_Kaizō Kidō_) [ "Indicative Red Smoke Flight (_Modified Kidō_)"]"

In a seeming homage to the burst of spiritual pressure upon Kamokuen's earlier release, the small generated red orb of extremely translucent smoke exploded, spreading almost a kilometer and a half omnidirectionally.

There was as slight pause before gradually the gases billowing from Kamokuen actually turned a dark blood-red. Before one could even dwell on that fact, the very air within the prevailing area itself began to become translucently colorized; taking on a lighter shade of red! And soon there began to be visible trace amounts of the lighter shade of red _within_ the dark blood-red colored gas billowing from Kamokuen, mostly around the top or edges of the perpetually rising fumes.

The weird exploding orb of red gas had happened so fast, he couldn't brace against it. But it was okay, because the explosion had no force at all, and then only a couple seconds later the air had started changing colors! Yet Díañolo managed to compose himself.

"And just _what_ is _this _supposed to be?" he questioned snarkily.

"The extent of my tracks," answered Ashido right on his heels, as if it was the explanation of life itself.

_"What? Tch. This shinigami's gotten so full of himself that's he's speaking cryptically now!"_

Ashido took note of the adjuchas's confusion before responding, "Have you so little memory adjuchas? When I released Kamokuen there was first an explosion of air just like what you saw just now, and only then did the fumes begin coming off of it. This modified Kidō spell I just cast reacts to the chemicals in the air like a pH indicator. So tell me, how much of the air has changed color?"

Díañolo froze. Not just the yellow-tinted grey haze billowing from his zanpakutō had changed to the dark blood-red color, but now all the air about almost a kilometer out was gradually turning the lighter red color and the color change was spreading out even further.

Now slowly as it rose further and further the dark blood-red color of the dense fumes from Kamokuen actually turned completely to the light red color.

"The answer to your confusion is simple," continued Ashido raising his zanpakutō eye level, "Kamokuen actually produces two types of gases," he revealed.

"Class 1: 'Kaori', which are the dense _scented_ fumes you see coming off of Kamokuen," explained Ashido, "And then there's 'Class 2: 'Mukyū' ', _odorless _fumes.

_"!"_

"And Mukyū as you may now realize are also invisible fumes," revealed Ashido to Díañolo's continued shock, "You see, Kamokuen is pretty reserved. It doesn't like direct confrontation, so instead of showing it's true colors, it prefers to show no colors at all in the first place, hiding it's true self by hiding behind a mask in the form of Kaori. And so it sort of resents that I made up a kidō specifically to reveal it's true nature. Curiosity just sort of got the better of me and I've had plenty of time be subjugated by it with being in the forest so long. So yeah, the light red air you see is Mukyū which is first spread across the battlefield by default right upon Kamokuen's release," further revealed the shinigami now to Díañolo's shocking revelation.

"That explosion of air...that was the class two gas?!"

"Correct. I've heard that it's easy to mistake the explosion as a burst of rieatsu," answered Ashido to his opponent's ire.

"Oh and one last thing adjuchas before this draws to a close. The dense scented Kaori fumes rise off Kamokuen, and while rising, eventually diffuse into the air itself like smoke rising from a fire and loosing it's concentration. But by that time it's already undergoing its own chemical reaction to the air anyways as exposed by my modified kidō. Yes," went on the shinigami, "Kaori naturally transforms into Mukyū," revealed Ashido dropping part one of the big news. Mukyū was coincidentally a colorless gas so Kaori's transformation was undetected and simply looked like gas loosing it's concentration as it spread out into the air.

"But you adjuchas," he said pointing the smoking Kamokuen at Díañolo who was long since past apprehension and was probably expecting another Enryū attack from that gesture, "All you did was speed up Kaori's transformation with your reiatsu. Heating up the air not only practically catalyzed Kaori's diffusion into the air _and _it's following chemical reaction with it, but by radiating the air with your heat energy you further ballooned the surface area of where Kamokuen's gases—Mukyū in particular—reached. Don't you get it? No matter how fast you run, your so called 'Radiante Presión' reiatsu will always expand the gases ahead of you unless you completely lower it. And if you do that, it leaves you completely defenseless. Meanwhile on the other hand, the harder you fight me, the faster you die. Those are your choices. Pick two."

Díañolo was seething in a mixture of anger and apparent hopelessness as explained to him by the shinigami. Wait, this was the reason he had said to Tarragó that he was leaving because his powers were dangerous or something like that? So it wasn't just talk? No! The shinigami was just trying to get to him! He didn't fear this-

"As of now I'm hardly exerting myself and that's an understatement. I could've sped this process up with more spiritual pressure, but I tried really hard to stall by using the least amount of energy possible to see if you'd give me any of the information or answers my group is looking for. Turns out not only are you too stubborn to even do anything like that, but also too weak to even last against my restrained base shikai power leve-"

"SHUT UP!" shouted Díañolo in rage. Because of the shinigami's ambiguous personality it was hard to read him at all, but at this point even Díañolo could tell the he was being made fun of, and doing it in a way that seemed like he was just speaking in general. That made him even angrier.

"SHUT UP and listen to yourself! You're talking like this fight is over just because of some coughs I did? No not even that! Those things were practically hiccups! Is that the best you can do? Also look at yourself and then at me and ask yourself who's received the most damage? If I didn't now any better, I'd say that mask is made of candlewax the way it's still melting, and your skin and robes look like you just played hopscotch through a flaming meadow!" shouted the adjuchas before pointing his rudimentary crystalline thumb at himself, "Do you know who you're dealin' with you outcast trash!? I'm Díañolo Matrasa, warden of Cuarta Cárcel! If you think I'll keel over from some weak toxic smog then you've got another thing coming! Of all of Los Seis Pilares, _I'm _the most durable!"

"How...disappointing," was all Ashido answered to that little spiel as he lowered and sheathed Kamokuen back in it's sealed form.

"What?! Why do you sheathe your sword! No, forget asking why! You're just gonna regret i-"

"This fight was literally decided the moment I drew my zanpakutō. There's no need to show you any further of my abilities, but I'll further demonstrate one last effect to close things out.

A brief pause was held before what Ashido said fully sunk in.

"SHI-NI-GAAAMIIIII!" roared Díañolo charging up what he intended to be a final Cero Empíreos. Ashido didn't budge.

"You called it 'toxic smog' earlier, but that's pretty erroneous. Smog is already toxic by nature so calling it such is really redundant," he went on, not even in apprehension of the growing blast.

_"Of course the fumes are toxic and poisonous, but it's the effects of them being so which give it the proper name by which it should be called."_

"DIE!" shouted Díañolo firing his blast.

"Not 'toxic smog'," continued Ashido with the same lack of urgency before the super-heated cero actually went through him, spreading out his then disfigured form as if he were made of gas.

Before the large basaltic adjuchas could even question, he was vertically bifurcated straight down the middle.

"Not 'toxic smog'," continued Ashido cooly as if never interrupted, sheathing his sealed zanpakutō upon landing behind, and looking back as Díañolo's split mask fell off before he disappeared into spirit particles, "But 'Hallucinogenic Smog'."

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started:(cont from last chapter)  
>Chapter Finished on paper: Jun 26th, 7:33 P.M.<br>Chapter Typed: September 3rd, morning- 3:44 P.M.  
>Revisions: September 16th, 2012, 4:51 P.M., Oct 26 9:37 AM, Dec 12, 3:37 PM est. 2012<strong>

Reading over this for revisions, I now realize this is my favorite chapter of the entire story, more so than even the future chapters I've already typed ahead of time at this point.

Did I forget to say Díañolo's character design is inspired by Spire from the Metroid Prime Hunters video game? Ok I said it, don't sue me.

A note about _Kaizō Kidō_: Urahara used it against Aizen when using a Kaizō Kidō of Hadō #4 Byakurai. I figured Ashido could have his own as shown in this chapter_._

**Quote:** "Do you know who you're dealin' with you outcast trash!?"  
>-Díañolo was saying there that Ashido was a shinigami outcast. Apparently he just assumed he was kicked out of SS or rejected by his shinigami bretheren or something like that.<p>

New Techniques/Abilities revealed:

- Kamokuen (寡黙煙,Reticent Fume) : Ashido's zanpakutō.  
>— Kaori (aroma; fragrance; scent; smell) (Note: 'Kaori' was formerly 'Kyō', until I realized I was using the wrong pronunciation of the kanji which gave it a different meaning relating to a Shogi game piece. Ctrl+F is your best friend in cases like these when you need to replace words)<br>— Mukyū (odorless,unscented)

-Enryū (Smogstream): Inspired by the word 'smokescreen'. The attack pronunciation was selected from the "On'yomi" reading of the Kanji(which this website won't let me post). The first character 'En' literally means 'smoke' or 'fume'. The second character "Ryū" is able to literally mean 'flow', 'stream', or 'current', etc.

-Bakudo 21: Shimesu aka Sekienton (Kaizō Kidō) ["Indicative Red Smoke Flight (Modified Kidō)"]

-Form: Pelota(Ball); Basically this is the ball form Díañolo kept curling into(again inspired by Spire from MPH video game). It wasn't called 'Pelota' in the chapter because...well there was no need to announce it. It would detract from the action.


	24. Acupunctured Breeze

(12/9/12)Check profile for hiatus info which you should know of already.**  
><strong>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does.

* * *

><p>Acupunctured Breeze<br>-

**September 10th**

**8:59.06 A.M. The attack to end all attacks! Newly transformed Zoréno clearly ended it all at once!**

**_Location: 'La Basurinera'_**

Zoréno's "Cero Erupción" had blown a hole straight from the bowels of La Basurinera past the quartz-wooded forest area of El Centro, piercing up to the desert and even making surprise cameo appearances in two other fights. The green-flame torch lined entrance path that descended to La Basurinera had been like a distorted cone or beaker. The traveler of the path would descend the vertical path until dropping down to the open circular plateau that was a sub-kilometer in diameter. This plateau was like the "base" of the aforementioned 'cone' or 'beaker' and in reality functioned as a giant foyer for the entire rest of the facility. Basically a hub area to access all the little sub-divisions of La Basurinera behind the usually shut and lowered rising doors that lined all around the 360° wall that enclosed the plateau; the wall rising into a ceiling that curved back toward the entrance hole in its own cone or beaker shape, further accenting the shape of the entrance.

The conceptual layout was comparable to Segunda Cárcel's triangle platform. Perhaps all the other three gaols had similar architectural concepts as well? Regardless, the diameter of Zoréno's attack had encompassed almost three fourths of the plateau, and since it had rocketed upwards with the ceiling entrance in its path, it had transformed the formerly cone-like entrance into a cylinder shape, actually completely engulfing, thus widening the entrance on its way up.

Rocks and dust rained down on the subterranean plateau.

"There. It's finally over," spoke Zoréno a bit winded, _"You've been avenged Xodrito."_

Doing his most destructive technique directly following his 'Gigantos' transformation took a bit out of him. He rose up from his position of attack with his palms on the ground, his newly sprouted golden body hair drooping off his already goldenrod body redundantly, like willow leaves.

"Geez 'Bore-Zor', to think you had to resort to the likes of '_that_'. And now who's going to be expected to oversee cleanup duty of the mess you've made? Yours truly of course," complained crossed-armed Celvia, her reiatsu along with her new voice, finally stabilizing from her own previous 'Protohumano' transformation.

"Oh my g-! Really Celvia? REALLY?! You're impossible to please! I know I said that already bu-"

"-Second time todaaay," hummed Celvia cutting him off in a singsong voice.

"No but I'm serious this time! Y-you told _me_ to do the attack _yourself_! _YOU _gave me the leeway!" reasoned a gesturing Zoréno looking down at his fellow adjuchas.

Celvia without moving her head simply looked up to the side at him in response, "Only because I couldn't stand seeing Tarragó side-step all your attacks and swat you around earlier. So as soon as he baited us we transformed and you wanted to finish him off so I was like 'why not?'," countinued Celvia, "Still, it doesn't change the fact that you resorted to doing what you did when you could've beat him easily by yourself after you transformed. But noooo, you had to use '_that_', and now look at '_this'_!" griped Celvia gesturing towards the still falling debris that seemed like they would never stabilize.

"No! First of all Tarragó 'swatted' _neither_ of us around. And it doesn't change the fact that you still agreed with me using it and are now complaining that you have to clean up the consequence of your own choice! This place and El Centro are under your command and El Centro has all the squads. Cleaning this, your own mess is-is a non-issue Celvia, really! Meanwhile you and the others send me off away from my own Dispatch Division, making me bring my own Gillian to both clean up _Lía's_ basically nuking of Segunda Cárcel which she should've been responsible for and to stop the prisoner and Gillian riots which was also her job given to her by _you_ in the first place! Don't get me wrong, I'm not resentful that I had to help her out and do her job; times were tough after all. It's just that a double standard is here and you know it. Both ongoing and upcoming missions? Disrupted, cut short, or canceled due to my Gillian and I dealing with that without complaint within only like-two hours! And _you _have the nerve to complain about that sinkhole of an entrance getting just a little bit wider? 'Oh no! I'm Celvia and I'm so upset! Who's going to repair it?! Why don't I just nervously pace back and forth past my _army_ of Gillian and _legions_ of hollow soldiers!'"

"Except now." The quiet words came right on the heels of Zoréno's rant so that he almost missed them.

"Wh-What?"

Celvia was now in a pose that signified uninterest as she seemed more consumed with watching each individual piece of what was the waterfall of debris. The Basurinera staff had long since fled deeper into the facility interior before Zoréno's attack. She wondered just how long it would take to restore the area. They had operations to conduct after all. Then she somehow caught that Zoréno had responded to her and made to answer his question.

"You said you 'dealt with the disaster at Segunda Cárcel without complaint'. 'Except now,' because it sounds a lot like you're complaining now to me," teased Celvia in a very uninterested uppity voice.

Zoréno was about to blow a gasket, this was too much even for Celvia's normal aggravation of him.

"Wh-what the?" he shouted grabbing and shaking the smaller lithe adjuchas by the shoulders, "HEY! HEY! ARE YOU EVEN _LISTENING to what I'm trying to s-_?!,"

**"YEAH, NOW SHUT UP ALREADY!"**

The voice jolted the adjuchas duo as their heads snapped up to the entrance descending down to La Basurinera where Abdul had been a minute earlier. Dust and falling debris still obscured their vision.

"Where are you! You're supposed to be dead!" shouted Zoréno.

"I _am _dead."

Instantly a burst of energetic wind blew away the dust and debris revealing just how big a hole the primate adjuchas had created. What also was revealed was a curious lack of Abdul.

"Yeah I'm dead alright, practically a ghost actually," continued the voice.

Zoréno and Celvia looked around frantically, doing their best pesquisas. Gradually they backed up closer to each other defensively, Celvia coming up to Zoréno's lower back as they approached each other back to back. As they nearly touched they were greeted with a ghostly,

"BOO!"

Rapid reactionary sonído occurred with Celvia and Zoréno jumping respectively in opposite directions only to turn around and see none other than Abdul Tarragó standing akimbo in the plateau's center where they'd just been.

"Impossible!" shouted the simian adjuchas to Abdul's deadpanning.

"Seriously? Again with the '_no way_' reactions?" he asked waving his hands for emphasis, "You've voiced your disbelief already; get some new writers for your stale lines."

"Bu-BUT HOW?! There was no escape from Zoréno's attack! Even if you somehow managed to tank it you don't even have a blemish on you! Let alone any type of burn!?"

At this Abdul passively put his hands up defensively, "Guys, guys. Chill. Don't freak out on me. I mean, it's simple really," he continued enjoying his smug guy role play, "You never attack with a dull blade," he explained, "Maybe if you'd concentrated that huge attack just now into the size of a normal cero, it would've killed me like you wanted it to."

"You don't know what you're talking about! Cero Erupción is one giant cero!"

Well technically Cero Erupción is an extreme variation of Cero División. Rather than shoot a normal cero that splits into multiple smaller blasts when attacked like the latter technique, the former is used by pouring all his energy into one spot in the ground that spreads and erupts into multiple full power normal ceros(which at that point are stronger due to his Gigantos transformation), which then combine into that one large ray of energy.

"Tch. I'll repeat myself again so you can understand. Your attack is a giant waste of space, literally. 'Cause it didn't 'condense' at all, the ceros just 'combined and flowed together'. Maybe if I was ya know, the size of a giant quartz tree or if you were attacking an army, then it would've been a critical hit. But at my size, like 99.9% of the attack didn't touch me at all, and based on how the ceros combined together and the overall surface area blablabla, I only took about the equivalent of three of however powerful your ceros are in that form! 'Oh, but Tarragó, you just don't understand! You were completely engulfed so your little explanation doesn't tell why you aren't scarred, burned, or even damaged at all!' That's what you two were going to stupidly ask right?" continued Abdul mocking Zoréno's Celvia impression at the end.

The silence from the two adjuchas audience was surprising.

"It's alright I'll just gladly give you the answer, but I use actions rather than words," said Abdul cryptically before hunching over and clutching his upper sides and straining.

_"What the-? What's he up to?" _thought Celvia before her eyes widened.

The tattoo-like pattern of little holes lining his fingers, both sides of each arm, legs and torso, and shoulders, suddenly all engorged to look giant sore-holes and began to generate sterling silver energy within themselves, consuming Abdul in a matching silhouette. Abruptly he outstretched his arms and body with a hollow's roar, releasing all the held back energy resulting in an explosive cero wave field emanating from his body in all directions like a continuous pulse.

The omnidirectional silver wave expanded with such speed that Celvia and Zoréno were forced to shoot individual cero's to nullify its relative impact to them. Even so they were pushed back a bit by recoil as the weakened wave then traveled passed them, exploding at the edges of the circular plateau after hitting the ceiling and walls respectively.

As quickly as Celvia and Zoréno nullified Abdul's attack they realized how he'd used that himself to nullify what apparently little had hit him of Zoréno's own attack earlier.

_"So that's how he did it. For him to hide something like that!"_ thought Celvia landing with Zoréno a couple feet back after the explosion.

"You should get the picture now, right you two? But don't worry, that was only the beginning of my 'interactive demonstration'," said Abdul lowering his outstretched arms back into a calm cross-armed pose.

"Don't you patronize us Tarragó! Sure you have a trick or two, but you couldn't beat the _six_ of us up on the desert before we even revealed our hollow powers, you couldn't beat only Celvia and I down here after we _did_, and you certainly can't now that we've both transformed,"

"Oh, Zoréno! You're such a team player getting right into the 'interactive' part of this demonstration, leading me right to what I was about to say," chirped Abdul. He seemed to be way too pleased with himself, even for him. It was sort of scary. "Tell me, have my skills improved at all since fighting up on the desert?" he posed the question innocently causing Celvia to scoff and Zoréno to then actually dignify it with a response.

"Tch! Why would they?! You pull out a stupid cero tech and think you're the best? You're still the same weakling that you were only a week ago"

"Oh? Is that right? Heh, I was hoping as much,"

"What are you-"

"Ah-ah-aah! Hold your questions until after the presentation is over," interrupted Abdul, "Now where was I-oh yeah. I was hoping that I'd been fighting the same way I had up on the desert. That way, I'd see how strong you really were. And since you two told me some secrets about your base, I'll enlighten you on myself a little," began Abdul looking up to the ceiling as if reminiscing.

"Back before I fought you six on the desert I was starving with having not eaten anything with real substance in months. It was like I could _feel _my chest hole expanding outward. Then, what do you know-I came across a group of adjuchas, or rather they came across me; ten of them, all in perfect health," continued Abdul re-telling the story he had told the rest of Alma Secta, but in better detail.

"I was outnumbered, and they had some weird powers, but I managed to kill every last one of them, all without allowing them to get so much as a bite out of me. Still, because of the circumstances, I took on a lot of damage and was starving on top of that. So right when I was going to take that glorious first bite, you two and the other four overdramatically crash the scene. I got ambushed with a cero so that I'd be even weaker for your little attempted group-intimidation; claiming I 'trespassed' on your territory and then had the nerve to ask me to join you. I remember now it was you Celvia who asked such a stupid thing! Oh, and your Gillians popping their hands up to the desert and dragging down my kills to the forest! Let me tell you, that **wasn't **a deal-sweetener!" continued Abdul.

"So yeah, it was like that in my weakened state that I fought all six of you and lost. But since then I've healed up and even had something to eat to 'break my fast' if you know what I mean."

_"He still continues to insult Xodri!" _mentally raged Zoréno.

"When you threw me in that cell, I was weakened, but after healing up thanks to the girl, and eating the kid, I knew this fight between us was coming, and if not then I was going to make it happen! Because unlike what you said earlier about my just 'assuming you had no hollow abilities and were just generic melee hollows like myself', I knew full well you all weren't fighting full power up on the desert. Why would you do so to slap around a already half-dead hollow? Whether or not you had special powers was still a question mark so I came to this fight prepared to see how strong _you two _specifically were by fighting at the same level I had earlier this week, but unlike then actually be in full health. And what a difference it makes!," continued Abdul now getting ecstatic.

Celvia was still stuck on his 'healing up thanks to the girl' comment.

"Sure it's only two on one instead of six on one and I've still been on defense up to now, but because of my speed, you two were forced to reveal your hollow abilities and now your full power. Even with your huge blast just now Zoréno, you did it so I wouldn't have any room to escape like I'd been doing to your attacks up to then, but that was your big screw-up!"

"Your keyword Tarragó: 'reveal'," began Zoréno quoting the latter word from Abdul, "As in we haven't even begun demonstrating our new forms. Besides what you claim was a 'screw-up', I haven't even shown you what Gigantos is all about!"

"And you've seen nothing from me Tarragó," echoed Celvia connivingly.

"Tch. Quit calling your original forms a name. So you suppressed your powers in lesser forms. So what!? I refuse to acknowledge that crap you two did as a 'transformation'. Still no matter what you call it, I don't have anything fancy like that but unless you two are deaf, you know I've been holding back as well! 'You've seen nothing from me'?" he asked dubiously, quoting Celvia as his spiritual pressure began to rise.

"Quit stealing my lines and witness a power not seen for over seven months!" he shouted, simultaneously releasing his spiritual pressure in a clearly visible silver torrent.

_"W-what is this?! It was obvious due to his lack of injuries or starvation that he'd increase in strength. It was obvious he was holding back when Zoréno and I were beating him before we transformed. So Zoréno tried to take advantage of his foolish holding back by either destroying him all at once or forcing him to reveal whatever true power he had in order to survive his attack. In the end the latter was achieved, but now to this extent?! He could actually have as much reiatsu as Zoréno himself!...No! Even more! Almost as much as…me! Or even…no! NO!" _she thought, stunned as Abdul finished by familiarly outstretching both him arms and releasing all his pent-up energy in an encompassing wave of pressure.

_"It's even stronger than the cero technique from before except this is nothing but reiatsu!" _thought Zoréno as the wave subsided revealing Abdul to be silhouetted by a silver aura.

"Sorry for being a long winded lecturer type today, it's _really_ not my style. But there's just one more little detail I have left before I annihilate you both," said Abdul sternly, making the mood tense before going back to normal, slowly raising his arm as if making a point.

"It's just that I'd just like to bring up a certain quote of yours again Celvia since it's so freakin' stupid and I still can't get over it. The one where you said that: 1-I 'assumed all six of you had no hollow abilities and 2-that because of '1', that I thought you were all generic melee-type hollows like myself'. Basically I already over-explained myself on why '1' is complete BS. And by their connected nature, if '1' is complete BS, well just guess what that makes '2'?

Instantly the section of patterns formed out of the multitude of holes on the fronts of Abdul's arms and legs engorged for just a second as Celvia and Zoréno were blown back thirty meters by what seemed to be a wall-pocket of invisible energy. The two were shocked at the out of nowhere attack as Abdul hadn't moved an inch! They weren't even sure his holes had engorged or not because of the speed of which it all happened, and now they had already returned to normal as if what happened didn't just happen. It was very surreal for them.

"Oh boy. Uh-oh. Why the shocked masks?-Well actually both your mask designs make you look like terrified kids, but that's beside the point. The point _is _that this shouldn't shock you. I mean, how else do you think I cleared away all the dust from Zoréno's fail-attack earlier?"

This further shocked his audience. Had they really forgotten about that? No, Abdul's location had just proven to be too much of a distraction back then to even pay much mind to the debris blowing away in the couple seconds that it did so.

"Thing is you guys; I have my own power as well. Or did you think these holes were just to frame my figure? And unlike you pricks who go around naming everything like you've got Adam-complexes or something, normal hollows like me don't name their abilities. But you know what? I got to thinking up there while the debris were still falling that I might as well beat these idiots at their own game. So right before blowing away the dust, I came up with it," he said with his hand still gesturing from before.

"Let's call it," he continued now pointing his arm forward, "**Conductos de Ráfaga**," _("Gust Ducts", lit: "Burst Ducts" as in burst of wind_).

At this a blast of seemingly pressurized air flew out of the engorged holes lining his outstretched arm, smashing right into both adjuchas only for Abdul to then notice the static flickering state of their figures before he was engulfed from behind by one of Celvia's black nebulous orbs.

From behind, Celvia now fired off multiple black orb forming beams in rapid succesion from her index finger which absorbed into the one already surrounding Abdul, causing it to get increasingly large within seconds as if she'd been pumping up a balloon. Now quickly, she shot out the familiar continuous black beam from her long fingertip as it connected into the spherical energy field surrounding Abdul. As this was happening, Zoréno who was next to Celvia, had his goldenrod reiatsu channeling through his mask as the reiatsu concentrated and grew whiter as Celvia twitched her beam-connected index finger upwards; this, causing the huge orb surrounding Abdul that was connected to the beam to do so in tandem.

Then, with her finger still outstretched, she pulled back in a rapid low row motion, and instantly Zoréno opened up his mouth releasing a howl so intense that it manifested into a shockwave of concentrated white reiatsu, making ripples in the air. The blast collided with the incoming nebulous prison surrounding Abdul that'd been coming at them both due to due to Celvia's low row gesture. The entire sequence starting from when Abdul had first noticed the afterimages took a little under four seconds.

Zoréno had fired a more evolved version of his 'Aullido Primal(Primal Howl)' called 'Aullido Cañón(Howl Cannon)' and upon contact with the orb, the previously physically concentrated howl then roared through the entire facility with the sound and force of near infinite individual Alarido Primario attacks. The ensuing explosion caused by both adjuchas's attacks was brief, thus intense and rocked La Basurinera. Yet both adjuchas stood calmly cross-armed at their close proximity to the dying down explosion.

Celvia's low row motion served two joint-purposes. First, to pull the black orb towards what was Zoréno's attack to increase the explosive power due to collision with each other. Second, to use that same pulling motion to set off the orb like a grenade at the exact moment Zoréno's 'Aullido Cañón' made contact, thus causing a tri-explosion from only two attacks.

_"Ha! Gottem this time! __**Granada**_** Negro**_(Black Grenade) was even stronger since I enlarged it by firing all those beams instead of just one like normally and combined with Zoréno's attack there's no-….!"_

Celvia cut off her thoughts as she noticed a figure coming to clarity as the literally roaring/howling explosion finished, noticing with grave dread that the figure was _flickering _before she started turning around in a cold sweat with Zoréno in unison to the sound of growing wind followed by surround sound applause.

_"He-he's using his wind to throw the clapping sound everywhere! THAT'S how he was able to throw his voice earlier when he first came out the dust and we couldn't sense him!"_ realized Zoréno as Abdul continued his applause.

"Brilliant! Brilliant attack combo you two! The coordinated synchronization! And Zoréno you moron, you should've freakin' used _that _earlier instead of that Cero Volcano-whatever garbage you tried to pull before!" raved Abdul, "And Celvia! You just continue to be full of surprises an-"

"y-YOOU! How did you learn 'Estático'?" demanded Celvia.

"What was that?" asked Abdul, his tone from just then now dropping to a sinister one.

Celvia started out her response, wagging her finger forward toward Abdul purposely with feigned understanding before revealing virulence.

"Ah, oh yeah that's right, you might be a little hard of hearing since Zoréno _did_ hit you directly with his Aullido Primal a little while ag—ARE YOU _deaf_! You heard me say 'Estático'! The second technique in the Modo de Sonído Engañosa series of standardized Sonoridad ("Sonority") abilities! _Only_ learnable if I might add from La Pirámide! So I'll ask you again! How did you learn it?!"

Abdul took a slight reprieve from wisecrack responses as he realized his opponents were finally beginning to crack in revealing some of the info he and his 'so called team' Alma Secta (scoff) had been looking for. This caused him to come to an even further realization before his response.

"I don't about 'sonoridad' or what this 'La Pirámide' is, but I doubt it can call dibs on an afterimage technique. As for how I learned it, all six of you used it enough back on the desert, along with your specific using of it throughout this fight gave my more than a direct eyeful. If it's anything involving sonído, then that's my forte."

At this Celvia was seething while Zoréno was growling.

"As for this 'Modo de Sonído Engañosa'; well that rings a bell. Didn't you say that earlier when you first used the afterimage? this 'Modo de Sonído Engañosa #2: Estático'. Hm. It has a similar wording to 'Offensive Gillian Technique #1: Lluvia Sangrienta', don't you think?" questioned Abdul with slight smugness causing his audience's eyes to widen.

"Yeah, the kid used that on the two humans and I after we first broke out, and even conveniently called out the name of it. Is that a thing now? Is there a reason you guys do that? Because as a hollow, at this point I don't know whether to feel _left_ out or _freaked _out. That along with you guy's naming of everything is putting me through some bizarre culture shock," drawled Abdul getting pretty complacent. He hadn't been like this since talking to Orihime and Chad from inside his cell.

He knew that this entire fight his opponents may have gotten hits in, but they choked whenever it came to decisive attacks because of his speed. Meanwhile, being on defense he'd gotten almost no attack in of his own.

"Regardless," began Abdul anew, straightening his posture and shoring up his voice with base to indicate he was serious, "It's time I finished my business here once and for all because unlike before, now," he continued getting in a fighting stance, "I'm playing offense!"

Celvia'd had it at that point. Without looking up and over at her comrade, she spoke. "Zoréno, _I'll _take him down myself and then that's when you finish him off, but if you see an opening before then, go for it."

"What're you whispering abou-!" said Abdul making to do a lunge with sonído only to be cut off as now both of Celvia's _entire_ hands began glowing, shooting hordes of orb forming black beams off of _all _of her fingertips. Knowing their near undodgeable speed, Abdul, learning from his mistakes, made to not use physical force and instead swat them away with a burst of air from his left arm holes, but the air traveled right through them with no effect. At the last second, he managed to actually sonído backwards to avoid contact. Celvia looked nonplussed.

"How ignorant can you get?! Trying to use wind to blow away light!" she shouted as the then dodged hordes of beams actually _still_ turned into orbs(albeit extremely miniature ones) without any physical contact along with her never having stopped shooting beams in the first place, now blanketing their battleground that was a sub-kilometer in diameter with small floating orbs.

_"What the-! They turned into spheres anyway?! And the beams I dodged turned out to be that many of them! And she just made thousands in seconds!" _thought a shocked Abdul looking around with anxiety before being drawn back to Celvia's voice.

"This whole time you've been bragging about your so called speed, so I'm taking it upon myself to refresh your memory on my own speed!" she shouted exerting a lot of reiatsu while continuing to shoot rapid fire of orb forming beams before familiarly generating one last orb in her hand and "crushing it", providing the physical contact so that it enveloped her. Pointing a finger from inside her enlarged orb towards one of the multitude of now small floating black orbs she spoke, "Rayo Negro."

A continuous black beam shot towards the small orb, connecting with it. And familiarly like previously in the battle, her own orb traveled up the beam like a ski-lift car, near instantaneously to the naked eye. Upon reaching it, the small orb she had arrived at enlarged to contain her own orb before another beam was shot to yet a different smaller orb. As she reached that new destination, the one she left returned to its normal original size before she went to still a newer one. With each small orb she left in her trail, a network of continuous beams connecting them all slowly began taking shape. With this infrastructure in place, she didn't have to shoot a new beam once returning to an orb already connected to another by a beam.

Because of all these details, at this pace, things went in a rather surprising exponential fashion. Within merely twenty-eight seconds Celvia has created an interconnected network of the thousands of spherical nebulous light barrier fields across the sub-kilometer in diameter plateau.

"What's wrong Mr. Tarragó?!" came Celvia's eerily now disembodied voice due to her near omnipresence, "_THIS _is ultimate speed. Even faster than the so called 'Peregrino Sonído' of Xodri's sister Lía! Far more than you can ever comprehend!"

It was true. Whatever floating orb she visited expanded only a few subseconds to contain her before she moved on to the next one. He could no longer even see her nor the original orb surrounding her. She was basically invisible. He couldn't think about escaping either. Not even by sonídoing up the entrance back to El Centro. She'd just shoot her beams ahead of him and cut him off with more orbs, expanding her network even further. He simply looked on from the middle of the sub-kilometer diameter meta-sphere network of the black orbs as its creator's voice came from all directions. During her brief setup he had simply watched captivated, forgetting all about Zoréno.

"Now then," began Celvia gathering energy in front of her mask, causing all the nebulous orbs to have a flickering tint of lavender-grey(her ceros no longer being pinkish like before her transformation), "Let's just hope you're just as perceptive as you _think _you are fast because I plan on this next one being my last!"

_"'Perception' Celvia? Bah! It doesn't matter if he's literally psychic! Not even you yourself know which direction you'll come from," _observed Zoréno, _"Hmm. Now I should head up to El Centro to check on the other fights-"_ thought Zoréno before he was interrupted by Abdul.

"Hey! Are you doing this or what?! I didn't come here to watch some knock-off light show! Come at me alrea-!"

"**_RAYO NEGRO," _**thought Celvia as hundreds of flickering black beams instantly appeared on Abdul not unlike the infrared laser beams mounted on firearm weapons for the assistance of aiming. In an indecipherable amount of time after the last syllable was thought in her head, one of the black beams solidified as the others along with all the little black orbs faded away, allowing Celvia's orb to ride on the beam towards an angle near the top of Abdul's head with her pre-charged lavender-grey cero.

Zoréno had been in his previous thoughts when Abdul interrupted him earlier only for Celvia to use Rayo Negro at that exact same moment as a massive explosion of lavender happened. There was no time to think, it all happened so fast. About less than a second into the explosion however, something caught the analytical Zoréno off guard. A silver-ish color was drowning out all the lavender as it expanded in a massive uncontrollable spherical wave completely overtaking Zoréno as he instinctively did a defensive Aullido Primal(which was also stronger in his Gigantos form). For who knows how long, the world was dark and fuzzy as his vision cleared. He was still standing up and realized he'd actually momentarily blacked out from the blunt force and recoil of his attack colliding with the offending one. Quickly he looked up in shock at the sight that greeted him. Abdul Tarragó was hovering above the ground on a sustained cushion of air, facing him. In his hand was something three times his height. It was held up by its wrist and had a long and slender body with grey skin and seemingly luminous black streaks and currently was charred and steaming profusely.

"C-Celvia?!" stammered Zoréno, actually questioning what he was seeing.  
>"She isn't dead," responded Abdul in monotone ambiguity. Raising his arm, he blasted the body with a fast burst of wind, launching her a good distance from Zoréno before the simian adjuchas could even react.<p>

"Tch. Really though Zoréno, did that girl really think her gimmicky techniques could beat me?" questioned Abdul as if he was talking to Zoréno 'man to man'; the latter stunned adjuchas still putting together the puzzle pieces. He'd never seen Celvia beaten. Celvia never loses. Ever. So why-?

"Tarragóóóó!" shouted Zoréno at mentally completing the puzzle of what just happened. Abdul had known that he wasn't going to be able to tell where Celvia would be attacking from or be able to sense her, so the very moment she shot him with Rayo Negro from all those different spots at once, he charged up another explosive Cero Wave except this time did it at full power unlike before when he hadn't released his full reiatsu yet. And he just got lucky that he happened to release it right as Celvia released her cero above him, forcing her to take both Abdul's and her own attack at close range. And what's more is how Abdul grabbed her to stop her from flying away so she would take the full brunt of it all.

As he further understood Abdul's methods, his rage grew along with his goldenrod reiatsu.

"Oh? I thought you two had it out for each other with all the annoying bickering, but it turns out you care for her as a comrade after all," observed Abdul from the vast distance between the two.

"_There's only one way to deal with him once and for all," _thought Zoréno with finality, appearing directly behind Abdul with outstretched arms, making to come together and smash Abdul's head in a clap with his massive hands. He did so, bringing his arms together in the outstretched clapping gesture before the other adjuchas could even realize what was going on, only for Zoréno to hit a wall of unforeseen pressure right as his hands were literally millimeters from their targets on both sides.

"Woahohohohooohh! That was _too _close there goldenboy!" said an adrenaline-high Abdul to Zoréno using Celvia's nickname, "Not lying here, but you actually almost killed me there! It would've been anticlimactic though," he continued with crossed arms without even turning around to face his attempted murderer, said would-be killer still attempting to do so while straining against the same pressure wall as his eyes widened.

"You..you can even exhume wind from your ears," thought Zoréno aloud before he instantly snapped out of it, opening his mouth to fire another Aullido Cañón only for him to feel a foreign object embedded inside his sinus cavity and the following implosion of energy within his then forcefully closed mouth.

Slowly Abdul rose the back of his head out of where he'd used a backward headbutt to bash into Zoréno's arrow-head mask. Being much smaller than the primate adjuchas, and said goldenrod adjuchas having a much larger head, Abdul had smashed into the top of Zoréno's mask as he was about to fire, effectively jamming his mouth shut as Aullido Cañón made to exhume, but then with nowhere for it to go.

In pain he didn't at first comprehend, Zoréno made to clutch at his mask only for a vastly smaller arm to stop his own mid-motion and twist him one hundred-eighty degrees, "No, no, allow me!" shouted Abdul as he face-palm clutched at Zoréno's heavily dented mask and ripped out the section between the top of the teeth and where a nose would be. "Oh was that your mask? That was your mask wasn't it?!" he taunted again palming the primate adjuchas's mask once more and enveloping the entire adjuchas into a sterling silver cero, sending him far away, careening out of the blast and landing right next to Celvia's prone form.

Abdul triumphantly hovered to the ground before his air cushion broke as he landed and ambled towards his two victims.

"I gotta admit, you two are veeery dangerous. I mean Celvia with her gimmicky light show and Zoréno actually almost killing me? He's so big, who knew he could move that fast. I guess I underestimated him," he said before pausing, "Tch. Really. 'You can even exhume wind from your ears?!' he asks," began Abdul now muttering exclusively to himself, "Boy aren't his observational skills sharp. Back when I said 'these holes aren't just for framing my figure', I wasn't excluding my ear holes, or any other orifice for that matter. Well now that you know, just don't go around making idiotic jokes about me being a 'literal airhead' or something predictable like that," said Abdul finishing his ramble as he decided to just sonído the rest of the distance.

"Huh…," he stated rather than asked, at buzzing in and viewing the prone forms. Celvia was on her stomach with her mask shoved into erupted ground from her tumbling crash landing while a now once more hairless Zoréno was on his back, still steaming from the recent cero. Both were severely burned.

"Geez," began Abdul rubbing the back of his head, "And here I was trying to actually hold back so they didn't get vaporized and they're still both practically charbroiled," he said, flipping Celvia over like a pancake with a burst of air from his right ankle holes. She and the much larger Zoréno were now side by side with no space in between them.

"Hmm. You two are perfect teammates. Doing combined attacks on me in perfect sync the entire time and now you're both playing dead together like it's basic protocol; really though, I'm actually on guard to make sure you guys don't jump up at me or something!" said an offhandedly anxious Abdul.

"And just who's playing dead. There's no need to. I don't fear the likes of _you_," came Celvia's weak voice.

"Aha! So she speaks after all. Yet you still amaze me. Even on the ground you somehow manage to raise your nose above me like some kind of snob. Now then," said Abdul jumping up in the air, "Let's get down to business," he finished coming down and slamming down on both Celvia and Zoréno with his feet, causing the latter to come to in a gasp followed by wheezing.

"Ah, nice of you to join us over here in Awake World® Zoréno. I was just getting back to the true reason I'm even here squatting over both of you right now besides the obvious reason that you make good doormats," continued Abdul before putting on a cautionary voice.

"Now bear with me here you guys. Don't blink twice because you might miss the fact that you look like you went through an experimental cooking process. Now you're probably thinking, 'Why didn't he just finish us off instead'?" he said in a purposely bad quality quoting voice, "Well the truth is I'm quite in tune with my culinary side. There's actually a saying that the hollows that _used _to be where I come from(because I ate them all) used to say all the time. It says, 'you are what you eat'! Those geniuses were wise because for example," continued Abdul.

"If you eat a mask, it helps with ensuring the durability of your own mask. If you devour something very lean, brawny, and muscular, it'll help with developing your own muscle and so on. So since both of you are the ones who devoured my right arm while I was unconscious like a bunch of cowards, by literal interpretation of the saying I quoted it should've helped your own right arms right?! So how about we symbolically complete the cycle!" he shouted.

From holes on both his arms erupted a controlled current of air that first flowed from only a single line of holes on each side of his arms. The narrow lines met in the middle past his fists, forming effectively a concentrated sword around each arm. Raising up both his arms, he came down, slashing his left arm over Celvia's right shoulder, and his right arm over Zoréno's right shoulder, after which the wind from both his arms extended in a horizontal current like a curtain all the way to the edge of the plateau. Both adjuchas's right arms had been cleanly sheared off.

"And now by eating your arms, the cycle will be complete," finished Abdul from his previous tangent only to notice Zoréno forming words over he and Celvia's previous bloodcurdling screams, "Yo-You sadist freak," he began.

"Oh man, this should be good," responded eager Abdul in sarcastic earnest before Celvia herself actually began speaking.

"You're no different than the deadbeat mindless cannibalistic trash of the forest,"

As was unsubtlly implied, he'd been waiting for that type of line.

"HA! Says the hypocrites who ate my arm! Sounds cannibalistic to me! And don't worry it gets better because I'm not just stopping here with you two! Being in tune with my culinary side, a person who's practically a chef like myself must thoroughly enjoy his meals by not rushing and savoring it instead," he began before his aura darkened. Gone was the wise-cracking laid-back drawling Abdul. That natural façade had fallen, revealing the hatred and malice beneath as his spiritual pressure rose to it true and final extent, nowsuffocating his victims.

"Yes, one must enjoy and savor their meals. Unfortunately I'm in a gluttonous mood since you people interrupted and stole my meal that I fought for up when I was starving on the desert, then you lock me up in that cell in that idiotically designed prison _after _actually making a meal out of me yourselves, and had the nerve to then continue starving me in said cell. So basically let me tell this to you straight. Like I said, it doesn't stop with you two. From the very moment the two humans broke me out the cell I made a decision. That adjuchas kid that I ate was only the beginning, merely roughage; something to break my fast, but now it's time for the meal; that being every last hollow within this base until I'm full. No one will escape!"

"Not very bright are we Tarragó?" chuckled Celvia weakly above Abdul's dark onslaught of reiatsu to Abdul's uncharacteristic silence in response. "Didn't your so called 'Alma Secta' ," she began as Abdul scoffed and rolled his eyes at the "team" title before hearing the rest of her question, "come here for answers?" she continued. "Killing us and wiping out the base populous hardly achieves that. Of course to a simple-minded person like you, if somebody won't tell you something you probably think if you just kill them then it's like they never existed."

"HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh man! The adjuchas kid said something _just_ like that before I blew a hole in his stomach except _he _was the one with that opinion, not me like you think I do," answered Abdul before taking on a dark tone once more. "Listen, don't flatter yourself. Whatever 'La Pirámide' garbage you spewed out before got my attention for a second or two, but I have a pathetically short attention span. I thought I made myself very clear that I came here to first kill you two specifically. That's my priority," he explained.

"Besides, out of all the members of our apparent 'team'," he acted like he struggled on the last word, "I, the shinigami, and the human boy aren't really winning any awards for being social butterflies. I doubt either of them gets any info. Especially considering I'm thinking the shinigami's rocky opponent literally has the personality of a rock while 'kangaroo lady' and the human boy are too poker-faced to sit down and exchange answers over a dinner table. That just leaves the human girl. She called herself... 'Orihime Inoue'," continued Abdul.

"It's true that both she and the human boy called Sado together 'recruited' the shinigami and I. But it's because of her alone that all four of us are where we are now and somehow ended up on some makeshift team with a lame name. So if anyone's getting answers it's her. It's her plan, so it's her burden. I just went along with it since my plan of finding you two aligned perfectly. So the person most likely to get answers is fighting the bird most likely to quack them out!" finished Abdul referring to Lía.

"Ha! You truly think that little runt of a girl can defeat Lía?" taunted Zoréno, straining against Abdul's spiritual pressure. At this Abdul turned sideways, looking away.

"Tch! How should I know or even care? I told both humans that when traveling with me that if they die, they die. They're responsible for themselves. Now then, enough of this chatting, I hate getting attached to food I plan on eating. But it seems like I already have due to the fact that I'd hate to eat your own arms right in front of you since it just seems _so_ rude," went on Abdul, "So get ready for the patented 'Tarragó brand' of euthanasia! Close your eyes, count to ten in your heads with me, and when you see this reeeeally bright light, don't, I repeat, _don't _run away from it," finished Abdul using his 'doctor' voice.

**"ONE," **began Abdul. The countdown had commenced in earnest.

Celvia looked on wide-eyed. This was too surreal. It was almost like the situation refused to dawn on her, she only just realizing the position she was in.

_"Is this really happening? Guh…can't move…pressure too high,"_ she thought, still feeling aflame from the explosion earlier as she looked over at Zoréno, wondering what was going through the now eerily silent primate adjuchas's head before being consumed by her thoughts. _"How did it end up like this? No! Really, how did it end up this way_?" Approaching this—this obscenely _meaningless_ death…it's like nothing even mattered. Everything they had worked for, now they would never taste the next step in Menos evolution. Did they really _all _have a chance anyway? That's what La Pirámide had promised. That's what got her to agree to have her group of herself, Zoréno, Klarradi, Díañolo, Lía, and Xodri join in the first place. Was it a mistake? No. She'd already explained as much to Lía! Before, they'd just been wondering the desert in a chaotic world, but La Pirámide gave them structure, order, existen-"

**"TEN!" **shouted Abdul as the promised 'bright light' consumed both Celvia and Zoréno's visions in silver saturation.

Yes.

Despite Abdul's advice, neither of them had closed their eyes.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started:(cont from last chapter)  
>Chapter Finished on paper: July 12, 2012 11:44 PM<br>Chapter Typed: September 5rd-September 7th , 9:16 AM  
>Revisions: September 16, 2012, 6:36 PM est, Dec 2, 2012<strong>

Yes the chapter title refers to Abdul's hollow ability, just to clear that speculation up right off the back.

A note about the failure of Zoréno's "Cero Erupción":

Alright so Abdul said how the attack didn't 'condense' and that if it did then it would've killed him. Instead, all the individual ceros that erupted out the ground combined and 'flowed' together. Basically, after Zoréno's poured his energy into the ground, ironically at that concentrated point, rather than condense, the energy _expanded_in surface area to erupt into all those individual ceros. The concept was that the attack grew so massive in scope out of nowhere that Abdul would have nowhere to run, but that was it's downfall. If only rather than pouring the energy into the ground, he could have concentrated it somehow into a stable beam. If only. But he couldn't. The attack generates so much raw energy at once that he can't 'stabalize' it proportionately, thus the necessary dumping of 'pouring into the ground', resulting in the spreading out and erupting. From such a brash start, it actually turns into a rather extremely brilliant attack; just that it's the wrong one. With his surprising speed level he should've sonídoed up there and instantly used Aullido Cañón as Abdul himself commented on.

This chapter we got some more of Zoréno's thoughts that hinted Celvia's past with him thinking things like "Celvia never loses". Previously in chapter 20 the narration stated about Zoréno, "It wasn't often Celvia did such a thing. Feeling her reiatsu...in this authoritative way brought back subconscious flashbacks." And now at the end of this chapter Celvia's own thoughts come to light, which also referenced her quote to Lía back in chapter 13: _"_Like I said Lía, we call cared about Xodri. And regardless of how you feel about it now, we _all _joined La Pirámide for a reason. Don't let what we've been through or Xodri's sacrifice go be in vain. Because of where we are now, we have a purpose where there wasn't one before and a future where before we weren't quite too sure." But by this chapter's end she's questioning the point of everything, but then remembers that quote she made as reassurance that it wasn't all for naught. Though before she can finish her rationalizations, she and Zoréno are consumed by the "light". We can only wonder what was going through Zoréno's head during those last ten seconds as well.

**Quote:** "You heard me say 'Estático'! The second technique in the Modo de Sonído Engañosa series of standardized Sonoridad ("Sonority") abilities!"  
>-What a beautiful [s] foreshadowing[s] quote...

New Techniques/Abilities used/revealed this chapter:

-Granada Negro(Black Grenade): Celvia actually used this in chapter 20, but the name wasn't revealed until this chapter.  
>-Aullido Cañón<p>

-**Conductos de Ráfaga**," _("Gust Ducts", lit: "Burst Ducts" as in burst of wind_)  
>_Unnamed 'Cero Explosive Wave'<br>_Unnamed 'Air Curtain' technique


	25. Stormy Weather

(12/16/12)You should know of the upcoming hiatus by now. If not then check my profile. Arc Resolution starts next chapter.**_ Please read the Author's Note at the chapter's conclusion for some important info._  
><strong>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. That is all**.**

* * *

><p>Stormy Weather<br>-

Birds Don't Fly in Storms**  
><strong>

**September 10th**

**9:00.04 A.M. The Rikka wielder enters the home stretch of her battle with Tercera Cárcel warden Lía Halconero! With no hope for any in the other simultaneously finishing bouts, it's unknowingly up to her to find the answers Alma Secta seeks!**

Orihime and all six Rikka rose out of the dust cloud created by Lía and her five 'Hermanas Sonído' clones(along with the flock and it's five 'flock clones' ) by rushing to Orihime in a speed blitz. Of course they were all indistinguishable so it just looked like there were six sets of both her and the flock.

With Orihime's shunpo assisted jump, she landed ten meters outside the rising cloud only to immediately realize upon landing that she'd already long since been re-surrounded by the same hexagonal formation of Lía and the sonído clones of her flock and herself.

"Did you perhaps think you were _going _somewhere jumping a few feet over and back? Where's that confidence you had a second ago?!" chided the six Lía's in unison. Sweat matted Orihime's face and started to drip off of her skin like rain off an damp umbrella. She'd healed herself, but weirdly it felt like she missed a couple spots. Maybe it was because she did so without kotodama and had been running low on reiatsu. Regardless, some trace amounts of pain from earlier were flaring up without remorse.

She had only gotten a little better at _doing_, shunpo, not necessarily 'faster' at all. She was only able to dodge the huge flock-cero earlier because it was a wide-open attack. And Lía'd been spot on when she said Orihime having all the Rikka out and using the techniques along with them using so much shunpo had drained her. And her cero imitation earlier didn't help things either; rather than be a generally concentrated blast like a normal cero, it had been an outpour of energy like the turning on of tap water. What a dire mistake that had been. It'd nearly used up a good percentage of her reiatsu alone and it hadn't even been that strong to show for it.

_"I told her so coolly that I'd 'finish things here so I could help my friends', but that was just from the emotional high. If I'm even going to live to the next minute, I'm really going to have to finish this right no-!"_

**"**This time you won't dodge!" interrupted the Lía chorus, all charging up their garnet ceros with the flocks doing the same. The charing ceros all arced around the hexagonal formation due to the effect of the sonído clones. Still one singular flock cero, but coming from all directions this time.

Quickly Orihime eyed a dune to the north and began rapidly thinking; purposely knowing the Rikka would be aware of her thoughts to herself. While she was connected naturally with the Rikka already when doing techniques without calling out the kotodama(no different than a shinigami doing their zanpakuto techniques without calling out their attack names), this was the third time she had actually consciously on purpose done such a thing to relay specific info to the Rikka. The second time was when telling Tsubaki to follow Abdul and the first time being in the fight against Los Tranquilizantes earlier that morning and her wordless use of Ayame to relay her plan to Chad. Now things were even more dire than then.

_"Guys! This is going to be a close one so follow my lead!"_ thought Orihime facing northward and doing another shunpo-assisted jump only for the hexagonal formation to sonído right along with her in mid-air as the ceros began familiarly weaving together like a net all around her.

Lía was at a loss. She'd told this girl that even if she shunpo'd away trying to escape Cero-Tejido Nido, that she and the flock would proportionally sonído along with her. She only escaped before because she'd managed to shunpo away from the blast right after it was already fired. And back then the blast was wide open. But _now_ she was surrounded on all sides. Yet here she was trying to pointlessly escape by jumping away and-

Lía's thoughts were cut off in real time by the actions of Orihime wordlessly materializing Santen Kesshun as she merged into it as it disappeared in a flash of shunpo.

_"WHAT!?" _exclaimed the avian adjuchas mentally before locating her only just coming out the shield and landing about an Olympic swimming pool away on a tall dune to the north. The girl knew she'd been a sitting duck having simply jumped into the air. She couldn't continue using shunpo after that first jump with no ground to use, so she would've just began falling and be consumed by the by then finished flock cero on her way down. Instead she had smartly used Santen Kesshun's flying capabilities to effectively flash away with the shield.

Like fowls possessed, the six molted Lías all landed back on the ground and burst toward the lone dune, surrounding it in the same hexagonal formation all without powering down their ceros, flocks in tow. In the split second it'd taken for them to surround the dune they'd all buzzed back in their exact positions, the Lías looking up at Orihime on the dune peak and the flocks flapping their wings faster than the naked eye could comprehend like hummingbirds to hover over the dune in a quasi-dome on all sides; denying any escape this time.

Before when Orihime dodged this attack, sonído clones weren't part of the equation. Now not only were they _the_ equation, but she was extremely clustered all around in close proximity to her offenders, feeling the encompassing heat radiate to her in the middle; reminding her of Abdul's cero back in the cave. Her Rikka surrounded her, each intently facing a different Lía each with a flock behind them.

"Now disappear girl!" shouted the Lía sextet as they made to fire.

"_THIS IS IT! NOW!" _she shouted in her head as she outstretched both her arms, pointing out her index fingers aligned with her middle fingers. Immediately came the compounding consecutive noises of the Hermanas Sonído clones vanishing simultaneously. Their arcing ceros returning to the actual individual avian creature charging it before imploded in their faces. Any sparse few "clones" left went static from the recent attack before buzzing out completely. This split second attack accomplished ceasing Hermanas Sonído on the spot, leaving all flock participants scattered wherever they'd been mid-sonído which surprised Orihime. She'd figured that they would have all been halted in-formation together in the same spot due to their swarm like movements, but as their wings twisted behind their backs and they fell, Orihime's attention centered elsewhere.

_Lía's _personal Hermanas Sonído was still going. Luckily the disruption of the Cero-Tejido Nido had disbanded the arcing ceros of the Lía clones as well.

_"As I thought, it's too weak to effect her anymore. Actually it never even worked on her properly in the first place," _concluded Orihime, still with outstretched arms in concentration as the flock rained down on the ground and tumbled off the dune around them.

"So that's the shinigami magic you used on me before!? They taught us at La Pirámide it's called Kidō right?! Oh please!" spoke the chorus of six, charging a new arcing cero among themselves, "When you used it before I was caught off guard but if you think-GUHAAH!" _she_ grunted now _singularly_ looking up at Orihime's back. Yes, she'd come to an abrupt stop, yet managed to keep her balance and not tumble, only falling to her knees. Looking back up in shock, her eyes were in alarm at what she saw.

"It's strange. You said you could kill me seven times faster," began Orihime, back still to the adjuchas, "Yet your 'Hermanas Sonído' only extends to six of you, all while going against seven sets of eyes. And where there're seven sets of eyes, " she said, now turning around, "There're seven sets of hands," she finished turning completely around and now pointing her own arm at Lía along with her six Rikka who'd already been doing so.

At this, the straining Lía's bare-bone arms forcefully twisted behind her back as her mask face-planted into the ground.

"I figured if the Rikka can do their kotodama and now even shunpo through my reiatsu, then what's stopping kidō?"

At this Lía actually forcefully began to stand back up off her kneecaps to which Orihime and all Rikka reponded in unison, "**Blood that's bound and wrapped",** causing her to fall back. But the desperate adjuchas raised her garnet reiatsu even more,** "**Rigid, cleft structure**,**"**** the words were spoken, yet it seemed that had no effect as she was now screaming, and abruptly sprung up, standing fully on two feet, straining to bring her arms back from behind, "**Atrophic sinews, arrested flesh, imprisoned spirit! Bakudo #1: 'Sai'!**" they shouted, finishing the delayed incantation. Immediately following, Orihime formed Santen Kesshun and placed it over Lía to contain and hold her in place even more, similar to how she'd done with Fátima earlier. Yet with all these safeguards, Lía still strained, actually causing the shield to rumble as stress fractures began forming.****  
><strong>**

_"No way! She's still about to break free!" _thought Orihime in alarm before becoming even more alarmed at noticing the flock birds had already reset their wings and were flying up in unison to the top of the tall skinny dune with now, get this; _drilling beaks_. With barely any time to react, Orihime expanded Santen Kesshun from around Lía more than it ever had before, jumping atop it as it did so as to catch all the birds flying up as their spinning beaks pierced through the shield which then reinforced with reiatsu accordingly, thus trapping them. But impact after impact of drilling bird beaks crashing into the now larger thus less reishi-dense shield all combined together, beginning to make solid cracks in the brittle barrier. And Lía took advantage of the less tight restraint by exuding enough reiatsu so that the middle of the shield around her was about to shatter any second.

The shield only had a couple seconds left so Orihime wasted no time grabbing the top of her right wrist with her left hand and slamming the palm of her right hand down on the shield allowing it to merge into it.

**"Stoke the primordial vigor! Provoke! Essence's butcher: Indentured pyre yet sparks!"** she said as the shield began to get extremely hot, **"Hadō # 3: 'Hitsuki Nokoribi**(Kindling Embers)**'!** she shouted as waves of heat spread through brittle shield causing the squirming lodged clay-like birds to bake as if in a kiln before they broke like pottery along with the shield itself then spontaneously combusting and shattering in a brief burst of heat energy; yet the shattered shield still clumsily held together.

Orihime rose back up, regenerating and shrinking Santen Kesshun around the avian adjuchas held in the middle again as she'd done before with Fátima, making it dense once more as the pottery-like shards fell off, onto and around the dune, most falling back to the ground around it. Then she _finally_ used the shield's kotodama to regenerate and enforce it even further(she'd been trying to preserve reiatsu).

Yet, even then Lía's rage cracked the super-dense shield and the Rikka's hold of Sai was beginning to erode with each deci-second.

Orihime was exhausted and no longer shocked at Lía's resilience. The adjuchas was simply doing all she could.

_"I know you're strong, much stronger than I am. So this one-time opportunity is all I have left in me. I'm using everything I have right here!"_

Spiritual Pressure built around her in the shape manifestation of a sharp edged six-petal flower, similar to when she trained with Hachi at the Visored warehouse*. In a mutually similar fashion her eyes now turned from brown to marigold.

_And reflected in them and emanating from her very being in the form of reiatsu was a perfect storm._

"Tsubaki!" she shouted as the offensive-purposed Rikka flew into her outstretched hands. At this Lía simply began charging a cero in desperation.

_And birds don't fly in storms._

**"Deluge of aether! Grasp of a mortal! Fair countenanced constituence, Bolting emission! Had**ō** #4!"** she shouted, the same golden light around Tsubaki now crackling with energy as Lía completed her charge and made to fire.

_Especially,_

"Koten Zanshun-Byakurai!"

_A lightning storm._

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started: July 12, 2012 11:48 PM est.  
>Chapter Finished on paper: July 23, 2012 1:20 PM<br>Chapter Typed: September 7****th ****, 9:26 AM – 9:06 PM 2012  
>Revisions: September 16th, 9:37 PM est 2012; October 26th, 9:18 AM est 2012; December 16th, 2:38 PM est 2012<strong>

Round 3/3 of fights completed. Here's a look at the the timeline of events,

**Round 1**

**16. The Stomach**  
>8:42.58 A.M.-8:44 A.M. Chad vs Klarradi pt. 1<br>8:42.59 A.M.-8:43.29 A.M. Ashido vs Diamont pt. 1  
>8:43.30 A.M.-8:49 A.M. Abdul vs Celvia and Zoréno pt. 1<p>

**17. The Mockingbird  
><strong>8:43.52 A.M.-8:49 A.M. Orihime vs Lía pt. 1**  
><strong>

**Round 2**

**18. Roaring Fist of the Tiger  
><strong>8:44 A.M.-8:47.36 A.M. Chad vs Klarradi pt. 2**  
>19. Melting Bone<br>**8:43.30 A.M.-8:46.20 A.M. Ashido vs Diamont pt. 2**  
>20. Erupción<br>**8:49 A.M.-8:59.06 A.M. Abdul vs Celvia and Zoréno pt. 2**  
>21. The Mockingbird Flock<br>**8:49 A.M.-9:00 A.M. Orihime vs Lía pt. 2**  
><strong>

**Round 3**

**22. Insomniac  
><strong>8:47.37-8:59.59(or 9:00.58) Chad vs Klarradi pt. 3**  
>23. Hallucinogen<br>**8:46.20 A.M.-8:54.06 A.M. Ashido vs Diamont pt. 3**  
>24. Acupunctured Breeze<br>**8:59.06 A.M.-9:10.40 A.M. Abdul vs Celvia and Zoréno pt. 3**  
>25. Stormy Weather<br>**9:00.04 A.M.-9:05.51 A.M. Orihime vs Lía pt. 3

This arc finishes in four chapters so the resolution is coming up. Thanks for following this far, but the story and plot keep moving forward.

*See chapter eight Omake/Side Story**:**"Training with Hachi-sensei, part 2/2"

As stated then chapter 20's "Author Note", Orihime's usage of shunpo will be delved into and further explained later. And here I'm saying her further kidō usage this chapter will as well. All within the next four chapters which are the 'arc' resolution. You'll know it's being explained when you see it and I'll clarify it even further in that chapter's Author Note.

QUOTE: "_Actually it never even worked on her properly in the first place,"  
><em>-Yeah, up to that point all Orihime's Sai did to Lía was restrict her movement, etc, not the full effect of completely binding the limbs. And even back when Orihime first used it on Lía in chapter 15, she still physically forced her way through it and even tricked everyone that was watching to think she was still under it's effect only to suddenly appear to break out of it and go attack Orihime. She had really only been stringing them along and had broken out of it before then as was implied.

New Techniques:

This chapter showed how charging ceros can possible arc when attempted mid high-speed movement. In particular among clones formed from such.

-"Hadō # 3: 'Hitsuki Nokoribi(Kindling Embers)': Sort of an ignition/explosion technique. How it is used without Santen Kesshun augmentation remains to be seen.

-'Koten Zanshun-Byakurai': Combines Koten Zanshun and Hadō #4 Byakurai. Orihime once again utilized the principles of Nijū Eishō ("Twofold Incantation") kidō, except using a spell with one of her kotodama instead of two seperate kidō spells. She sort of did this previously with using Shō on Santen Kesshun. And then fully demonstrated Nijū Eishō when using Koten Zanshun-Shō. Effects of Koten Zanshun-Byakurai are unseen.


	26. Falling Wreckage

(12/23/12)Thought I wouldn't update today right? It's been a while since I updated at night. Better late than never.

Arc Resolution begins. Check profile for info on upcoming hiatus info.

Read Author's Note as always after finishing the chapter.

I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. That is all.

* * *

><p>Falling Wreckage<br>-

Inverted Stripes**  
><strong>

**September 10th**

**9:11 A.M. El Centro was rocked by that final blast, but whose blast was it?!**

Less than an hour ago, the satellite branch of Los Seis Pilares(The Six Pillars) had nearly fully recovered in record time from the horrifying tragedy at Segunda Cárcel. Yet as of speaking, all six "pillars" had now fallen. At this point El Centro had relatively only a few squads left within it. A lot had been on missions during the time Zoréno had basically taken his nearly his entire force of sentient Gillian with him from Dispatch to quell Segunda Cárcel's riots along with the added job of having to subdue Lía. This left Dispatch having to "freeze" all ongoing operations and putting all squads that had been on missions consequently on extended deployment.

There were the squads who had gone to the gaol under Lía's command, and then there were the reconnaissance squads initially sent by Celvia prior to even then that had returned to the gaol after Zoréno's arrival for revenge against the prisoners who'd initially run them out. All in all, annoyed with having to send constant messages and constant status updates during the period of cleanup in the gaol, Zoréno then left Segunda Cárcel in charge of his sentients so that he could bring the then still unconscious Lía to another debriefing with all the other adjuchas in person. The plan had been that Lía would wake up and help them all connect the dots together, which she did, only for "Alma Secta" as if on cue to show up right afterwards.

From there, the battles had taken place. The majority of the squads present within the base at the time had still been at Segunda Cárcel during that start of the battles, and Zoréno's Dispatch worker sentients kept them in order by making them continue to finish up their repairs to the gaol so as not to wildly interfere in the fights. They hadn't even noticed Alma Secta's initial infiltration where they came in and stole some random Gillian to arrive on the battlefield with due to Ashido's cloaking kidō.

So where did this leave the loser 'standby' squads left at El Centro? Well with the other battles all going far away and unable to be sensed properly, this made them the honorary audience members of the battle between Chad and Primera Cárcel warden Klarradi Tamoyo. They'd both stayed within El Centro's confines albeit in the forest section near La Basurinera's entrance away from any infrastructure such as the plaza, squad "barracks" or sparring grounds. So once all the spiritual pressure died down after one final explosion, multitudes of hollows and sentient Gillian crept toward the battleground like cautious ants as if double-checking to see if they had sensed everything correctly.

And just as Zoréno's sentient Gillian kept the squads deployed at Segunda Cárcel in check, Celvia's sentient Gillian had done the same in El Centro, keeping them from interfering in the extremely dangerous fight. But now curiosity and a little bit of nosiness had gotten the better of everyone. But anxiety was welling up within all the sentients.**_  
><em>**  
>A certain familiar rookie group of hollows coincidentally was at the very front and led the 'snooper vanguard'.<p>

"Hey Tolsá! Slow the heck down! We've lost Barrón and I'm freaking out here!"

"Clara, why don't you also quiet down and 'speed the heck up'. We're _not_ waiting up for Barrón. You think this type of stuff happens every day?!" asked a near whispering Tolsá concluding that merely losing their teammate in the rush was inconsequential. It's not like they'd never see him again. But what they were rushing for, this was a once in a lifetime chance.

The two of them were among an emerging crowd that had gradually turned from creeping, to instead rushing towards the battle epicenter. Hundreds of hollows were among them, as if rushing from all sides of a circle to converge upon that one center spot where they'd sensed a battle like no other involving Warden Tamoyo and her opponent who'd been among the codenamed **Los Intrusos**(the intruders) who had all just appeared at El Centro out of nowhere less than an hour ago and just started actually fighting with all the adjuchas! For some reason to Tolsá who was currently acting more high-stung than normally, the reiatsu of this opponent of Warden Tamoyo's seemed unnervingly familiar and he would drag Clara by her mask to confirm it before she slowed him down. But he had to get there first to see if he had even sensed everything right because if he had then it meant-

BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!

If there was any indicator that the 'rush' had turned into a 'race', then this was it. It seemed all hollows had thrown caution through to the wind.

"Um, just where do you rookie upstarts think _you're _going? This is much too dangerous a situation. Leave the reconnaissance to the elites," came the proud voice of a much larger male hollow rushing alongside the smaller Tolsá and Clara with three other hollows before they all descended down to lower branches and sped ahead.

Tolsá was undeterred, "You call this 'every squad for themselves rat-race' reconnaissance? Are you _kidding_? All of El Centro wants a piece of this!" cheekily retorted Tolsá as they approached some sort of light indicating a clearing up ahead.

_"That wasn't there before!" _thought Clara with wide eyes.

"You know who you're talking to kid?" incredulously asked one of the four hollows, a female, as she looked back at Tolsá as if saying 'surely you jest little one'.

"You're lookin' at Squad# 52: 'Brisa Verticales', so stay out of our way!" chided a third hollow. This only enthused Tolsá further.

"Is that so? Because oh, I could've just sworn that elites along with most of the actually normally ranked squads all got deployed to Segunda Cárcel. How bad did you guys screw something up to get left behind?

"Why you-!"  
>"Forget him let's go!" answered the first hollow as they finally came up to the clearing entrance.<p>

BUZZ!BUZZ!

If there was any _further_ indication that the 'race' has turned into a 'free for all', this was it; seeing as two sentient Gillian had just sonído'd in front of squad fifty-two. No wait, they weren't trying to get to the destination before them, but instead had cut off their path!

Squad fifty-two came to a halt landing on a quartz tree branch to avoid crashing into the sentient Gillian. Tolsá and Clara, caught off guard, landed on quartz tree branches right above the two Gillian's unique masks. Quickly, the hundreds of hollows right behind and around them followed suit at being cut off by more and more sentient Gillian further back. The uniquely masked Gillian legion had effectively stopped the mass converging at the center point that was this 'clearing', forming a circular wall around it. The area became completely silent.

"What do you all think you're doing?! This barbaric behavior is unacceptable!" admonished the high octave female sentient Gillian in front of Squad 52, Tolsá, and Clara to them and all the hollows behind them.

"The area is still volatile! Please report back to the plaza or squad barracks at once until further orders!" continued the softer voiced Gillian next to her.

For once Tolsá was deflated. They were almost there! Just their luck! These two weren't just any sentient Gillian. They were Vana and Maribel, Celvia-sama's right hand sentients and the strongest sentient Gillian within all of Los Seis Pilares! Besides the adjuchas, they were the strongest in the base, and they had to run into not one, but the both of them. Not to mention the rest of the sentients! Yet something was off about them. All the Gillian seemed….anxious…fidgety even.

"But Vana-sama! Please listen to u-"

"No exceptions squad fifty-two! Leave or-!"

"-A-Ah-!"

All of squad 52, Vana, Maribel and all the hollows and other sentients around and behind them caught on to Clara's growing scream and looked up at her.

"AAAAAAH! It-IT'S!" began Clara trying to get the word out. Nobody could tell what she was thinking until she pointed her hand towards the clearing. Being on the highest branch above Vana and Maribel, only she was able to see into the clearing at what she was pointing at.

At this all decorum was lost anew as hollows three hundred sixty degrees all around the makeshift blockade of the sentients sonído'd up as high as the canopy to get the best view into the strange newly created clearing. First they were shocked at seeing all the felled quartz trees, but then their eyes slowing moved towards the center, going over impacts and craters until they got to what made Clara scream.

They'd spotted Chad. It was what the sentients had feared.

"A HUMAN!" was the only individual exclamation it took for the hollows to erupt into unanimous bedlam. They had long since stopped caring about hiding their presence anyways.

And remember those previously mentioned rumors about "the negación'd hollow-slaying humans" that came out of Dispatch earlier this morning and spread over the base like wildfire? They were now being confirmed.

"He's one of the humans we saw at Dispatch this morning!" exclaimed Tolsá getting the attention of some of the hollows around him who actually heard him above the ruckus. His previous anxiety about the opponent of Warden Tamoyo seeming somehow familiar had been ratified.

"That's right! We heard it was a rookie squad that got sent to take Squad three-three-six to La Basurinera because they got killed in some mission or something! That was true?! It was you guys?! And _that _was the mission?! Are you serious?!" exclaimed the initial speaker of Squad fifty-two looking up at Tolsá's branch.

"He's telling the truth! There was him and another human girl! Neither of them had a scratch on them back at Dispatch, but squad three-three-six was practically chopped to pieces!" added sultry-voiced Clara animatedly.

"'Another human girl'? She must've been part of 'Los Intrusos' as well!"

Technically despite the rumors, all the hollows had been in denial when they initially sensed what felt like humans burst into El Centro along with the other 'intruders' earlier. Because one; humans didn't have spiritual pressure and as such the hollows had no reference point to even infer humanity in these intruders with very different feeling spiritual pressures, and two; because the rumor of the humans had been just that, a rumor. And even if it had been true (highly doubtful) they'd apparently been locked up in Warden Xodri's gaol which oh, also happened to have had prison riots and been blown sky high by a ton of Gillian ceros. Sooo basically, it'd seemed impossible on four different fronts.

"You say 'as well'? But—I'm mean no! It doesn't add up! Those two couldn't have been part of Los Intrusos; neither of them! They were locked up weren't they?! In Segunda…Cárcel," trailed the answering Clara as her eyes widened in pseudo-realization at the implications of such. Tolsá had long since caught on, and the sentient Gillian'd had knowing grave looks from the very beginning as if they'd been trying to hide this. All these rumors and disasters had damaged the integrity of trust between the standby squads and the sentients.

"He helps beat an elite squad without getting any damage at all, _apparently_ helped instigate the prison riots, and then just…**destroys Warden Tamoyo**!" exclaimed the final member of squad fifty-two at last speaking, yet in fear.

All the hollows had long since taken in the sight, but hearing it declared set them off even more, making the view even more fearsome to take in.

In the middle of the clearing was Chad himself, still standing with his right arm outstretched in its final punching form like a frozen statue.

And was it mentioned that that was exactly how he'd been for almost the past eleven minutes?

But the truly awesome(in the traditional sense of the word) sight that the hollows feared was right on the other side of his still clenched and trembling fist. About half a city block wide, infinitely deep, and going back all the way until it was too far out of sight was the largest skid-mark they'd ever seen; a skid mark that had been steaming profusely for the last eleven minutes and showed no signs of stopping at all. Chad stood behind the start of it, in a frigid sweat and an equally cold blank stare. The armor of his right arm looked as if it had been peeled and stripped off and was dangling off of his arm, some areas comparable to giant hangnails, others vastly worse. The point is, his armor didn't just cover his skin, it was literally one with his arm once materialized and transformed. But as things stood now with areas so shallow that it seemed like bone was underneath, this was almost worse than the damage Yammy had done to it when mutilating and snapping it in half. Maybe equal or even worse than that actually in an analogous way.

And so he stood, wide blank eyes, right arm still outstretched in front of the crater-skid mark hybrid, as if still in shock. Yet as an ever-continuing testament to his durability, his armor refused to dematerialize.

This was what the previous hollow rush/race was all about. A great battle had taken place between extremely powerful fighters. And with the battle finished, no matter the victor, there was likely to be now weakened victorious prey straggling off the battlefield, or at least severed limbs or body parts of any kind. Easy pickings and a super nutritious meal to boot that would make the eater tenfold—no—a thousandfold stronger! This was again, the cause of the mass convergence at the clearing. But of course despite the aforementioned 'no matter the victor' mentality, they never had intended to cannibalize or devour a possibly weakened Warden Tamoyo or even any severed limbs of hers, but instead the intruder she'd been fighting. They'd be weakened or their body parts would be everywhere, and wonderful, gracious Warden Tamoyo would allow them them to feast, so it was whatever squad got there first; first come, first serve!

Yet this human…he…he had all but annihilated, no, he _had _annihilated Klarradi Tamoyo who had felt insanely stronger than ever before at the very end, yet she'd literally been wiped off the face of the Menos Forest. And yet as they observed that steaming crater-skid mark with this understanding, they also understood their previous mentality. The great battle between powerful fighters had ended. And now the now weakened straggling victor would be turned into the ultimate prey.

"Look att'em! He's weak! Come on you guys lets gettem!" encouraged a hollow to his squad members who made to converge on the statuesque Chad. This started the domino effect before they were all shut down with spiritual pressure by the sentient Gillian.

"Idiots! Do you wanna end up just like Tamoyo-sama!?" cried the male voice of a sentient further down the Gillian formation.

Throughout all this Chad literally didn't notice a thing. He was stuck in Chad World inside his own thoughts, whatever they were as blood continued falling out of the increasingly anxious boy's arm.

One hollow managed to overcome the spiritual pressure onslaught and from the canopy, aim their spiked arms down to Chad. With haste, a barrage of spikes erupted from their arms, flying down to a seemingly unobservant Chad before they simply went through thin air upon supposed contact. Chad had seemingly vanished in thin air.

"Where'd he go!" shouted the offending hollow before it was impaled by the tongue of a mindless Menos Grande Gillian who was one of many more now coming in the back from behind the hollows.

"GANOLOOO NOOO!" cried his team member in anguish, still being crushed under the combined spiritual pressure of the sentients.

"That's his consequence for not following orders! Now the human is gone! If only you people had listened! You choose _now_ to act out!? Man, if Celvia-sama was up here," began to threaten the same male sentient before a sudden flash drowning out all light followed by a whirring noise was seen and heard in the clearing respectively.

A spinning dome of bandage-tassels unraveled revealing the gazelle masked Ashido Kanō. The top right corner of the mask had melted in so that it covered and dried over the right eye hole. His already previously homely shinigami robes were now scorched and what little skin was visible looked like it had unfinished business with some healing kidō.

_"Darn it. Looks like I literally just missed him!" _thought Ashido, looking around, paying no mind to the hollow horde that completely surrounded the clearing. He got distracted by the damage around the site and then turned around and saw the giant skid-mark/crater.

"It's a shinigami!"

"I knew I'd sensed one earlier when the intruders got here! I _told_ you guys!"

"What?! That's a shinigami?!" asked another hollow. Some of these had apparently never seen one before.

"Why is it wearing a mask?!" asked a differing hollow.

"NO! NO way!" said another hollow coming to a realization, "It's the one from the stupid stories these local hollows tell; the one about the shinigami who goes around the forest murdering hollows for kicks!"

"I thought that was just idiotic folklore!"

"Apparently not moron, just look at it! It's right there!" answered a teenage-voiced female hollow.

"Look! Look on its back, on the brown fur coat part with all the other ones! It's Warden Matrasa's mask! And it's split in half!" cried another pre-pubescent sounding voice in terror.

Even though he too was one of the ones who had never seen a shinigami, Tolsá took this all in with calm indignity as he thought on with new understanding.

So not just the one about the humans, but all the rumors had been true. This past week, all six adjuchas had mysteriously gone out two different times on missions to apparently capture targets outside the normal jurisdiction of the base. It wasn't said that's what they were doing, but that's the only reason they would do something so big. And for all six to leave and confront these hypothetical targets, meant both of them were high priority. If just like the two humans, that this shinigami was part of the group of 'intruders', then he had to also have been one of the two targets, the fabled shinigami living out in the forest; it all made sense now! Which squads or scouts had went out on reconnaissance duty to initially scout out these targets after their discovering them had been top secret, but apparently one or two of the hollows involved had opened their mouths because by yesterday night, all of the base was talking about it; what did they capture? Only for yet newer aforementioned rumors to spread like wildfire upon the two human's accidental negacióning earlier this morning. With those three suspects out of the way, that just left one more person to identify as the fourth intruder. While he hadn't initially recognized the shinigami's reiatsu due to never encountering one before, he'd definitely sensed that the last individual had been a hollow.

Meanwhile, the hollows looked like they'd seen a ghost, mostly because of the crazy stories about the bloodthirsty shinigami they'd heard passed on from the locals. Now normally they wouldn't be so afraid of a mere story, but seeing the mask of the adjuchas Cuarta Cárcel warden, Díañolo Matrasa, now sliced cleanly even and attached to the same fabled brown fur pelt from a dead hollow along with other hollow masks sitting there like trophies and he himself wearing one kind of freaked them out.

Yet some of the hollows (ironically) had _heart _and rallied their squads and others to attack the shinigami who still seemed fixated on the giant skid-mark/crater, and further on the massive sinkhole caused by a certain primate adjuchas's Cero Erupción.

"STOP! STOP IT! _DON'T_ GO AFTER THE SHINIGAMI OR THE HUMAN! Celvia-sama had me mobilize you as **STANDBY **SQUADS! So you will remain orderly and _STANDBY_ until Celvia-sama and Zoréno-sama return!" forcefully yelled Vana. Her meeker partner Maribel simply looked on. Truthfully Vana was worried. Remember before when it was mentioned that all the sentient Gillian seemed 'off' and were 'fidgety'? It wasn't because they wanted to keep secrets from the squads as implied, but instead because a while ago all of them began feeling an empty listless feeling about their beings. And seeing the behavior of the mindless Gillian indicated something strange indeed was going on.

"Maribel! Come with me. We're going down to La Basurinera!"

Whether docile Maribel wanted to protest or simply wondered if Vana just wanted to get Celvia so they could get the standby squads to officially do something was unseen, as she simply eyed the new giant sinkhole that the entrance to the underground facility used to be somewhere within.

"Alright then Vana. Let's go," she agreed as the two sonído'd down to vast endless dark descent.

_"What are those to up to?" _questioned the same male sentient from afar with his star shaped mask.

Chad was currently rushing from quartz branch to quartz branch. All physical feelings were non-existent. There were only mental ones.

_"That kidō! It's supposed to just give something like a thrusting force, but it felt like my arm almost launched and ripped out its socket. No, I think it actually did that! I can't even attack properly because of this unrest! No...something tells me this type of thing would've happened regardless even if on a smaller scale. And my arm,…definitely no more kidō_!_"_ heconcluded, truncating his words trademarkedly even in his own mind as he thought the last line for about the umpteenth time while looking at his deeply peeled and stripped arm, entire pieces of it dangling and bouncing as he jumped. It was becoming like a mantra now.

He had used Hadō #1: Shō to speed up his punching speed and energy blast in those last subseconds, but he hadn't intended for things to end up the way they did at all. Was it because he had only said 'Shō' instead of the full 'Hadō 1' behind it? Is it because he didn't say the incantation? As if he had time to do so in that situation, or even remember it! He almost died just in the amount of time it took to say one-syllable 'Shō' while going against that ultimate hyper cero. Regardless, he had a feeling things would have either ended up the same, or worse—but definitely not better. And he still couldn't get his head on just what had happened to Klarradi at the end of the fight. The images of the joey-hollow still haunted his mind, and only then for his Shō-powered punch to do what it did. Back when he and Orihime were sparring earlier that morning, he'd wondered merely out of curiosity what would happen if he used the spell, and now he knew.

"_No more kidō,"_ repeated Chad in his head before now clenching his left hand while ruminating on plans,"_I've got to get to the desert, I've got t-!"  
><em>  
>BOOM!<p>

Chad looked up at the sound, only for his head to move right up into a blunt force smashing right into his face mid-motion of looking up. Grossly caught off guard from being so unaware of his surroundings, he crashed down on to a large wide quartz tree branch as a heard a mass fall next to him.

"Eh!? Sado-kun?!"

"Inoue?!"

Orihime's athletic clothes looked to be in mint condition (thanks to Sōten Kisshun), while formerly messy but now wild-haired Chad's mutilated burned and charred skin was even more evident due to his current shirtless status.

"Where did you come from?" both humans asked each other in unison.

"I guess I can explain that," came a voice on higher branch of an adjacent tree before the owner of the voice jumped down to their level. He had expertly interrupted before Orihime could fully take in and make a big deal about Chad's damaged condition.

"Kanō-san?" she cried out instead as her vision cleared.

Before the two humans could switch the question from themselves and instead ask where _he _himself had come from, he decided to get right down to business in his typical fashion.

"It seems my fight finished up first," he began, "Now you might be wondering why I didn't come to assist either of you then. The truth is though that I was monitoring all of your fights, even the adjuchas's with Reiraku(Spirit Threads)," he began, walking up to Chad, kneeling down and applying basic healing kidō to his wounds.

At this admittance, Orihime remembered Rukia's offhanded mentioning of the same technique (reiraku) outside the Visored warehouse late the previous night.

"And as such, I was ready to assist with Sentan Hakuja at any time, by actually combining it with Reiraku. After my fight it was Sado, Inoue, and then the adjuchas's fights who finished in that order," he continued before turning to Chad, "I came back here sensing you were in trouble only for you to have just left. As I followed your trail, I saw Inoue burst through from the desert and crash into your head with her own. And at the speed you were going, I'm willing to bet you wished you'd listen to the adjuchas and I's idea back in my cave about wearing one of my masks.

_"That poor mask wouldn't have stood a chance_," concluded a solemn Chad, comically dismayed at once again being on the receiving end of Orihime's hard head.

"Now it's my turn to ask questions," continued Ashido, "Inoue-san, what exactly were you up to?" he asked candidly.

"Well,..uh, nothing important like what you were doing Kanō-san it's just..," began Orihime hesitantly with her unrestrained hair blowing in the wind.

"At first I didn't want to stay around here and fight since it seemed too crowded, so I got the warden adjuchas that was chasing me to attack with a cero so I could dodge and she'd then blow a hole up to the desert through the shallow area of the canopy. That's how I got up there. The problem was getting back down. I..I don't really have a strong enough attack to pierce the desert sands. But the adjuchas I fought did this really super powerful attack during our fight that almost completely pierced to down here even though she attacked a place that wasn't shallow at all! Luckily, she made it so shallow that I was able to go hop in and try to dig my way down with Shō. But I wasn't even making a dent since Shō isn't really specifically for digging and I barely had any reiatsu and was trying just not to pass out. So I just laid down for a second to rest and suddenly the sand started sinking, slow at first and then faster and faster. I didn't want to fall like that so I tried pushing myself back up, with Shō, but it just blasted me down through the sand instead and it closed back up after me! Then I was falling before my head hit this invisible wall out of nowhere that turned out to apparently be Sado-kun's head!" she went on animatedly.

"'_Apparently be?!'"_ thought a sweatdropping Chad.

"But seriously, Sado-kun, you just appeared out of nowhere! Kanō-san wasn't exaggerating. How are you really that fast all of a sudden?!" asked an in awe Orihime.

"Hm. Long story. It's nothing," explained Chad to a put off Orihime.

"Are you really going back to that 'you don't feel like explaining things' attitude Sado-kun?" she teased.

"Something like that," Chad answered quite seriously rather than joking. Well, actually you can never quite tell with Chad.

"Hate to interrupt you two, but we have company," said Ashido who now had his back to them facing out into the quartz tree arrangement. At this, both Chad and Orihime got up from their fallen positions and stood up to see what Ashido meant. Chad's eyes widened at the sight.

"You four..!"

"Oh now, he actually remembered little old us!" came a snide voice. It was Dámian, one of Zoréno's sentients! And the other three were Zoréno's as well, Calibol included among them. With Ashido using cloaking kidō, Alma Secta had taken them from Segunda Cárcel having Abdul subjugate them temporarily so that they could ride the four of them to the battlefield to initially confront the six adjuchas; looks like they were still upset about that. Dámian in particular blamed the two humans for the loss of his arm earlier that morning and held a grudge that was rather apparent as literally hundreds; perhaps thousands of hollows and countless other sentient Gillian appeared behind the first four in buzzes of sonído all north of the quartz tree Ashido, Orihime and Chad stood upon. Ashido took further note of the mass usage of sonído.

At this, Calibol stepped forward with his large alabaster Gillian boot. "You see, this morning Dámian, I, and some others were sentenced overtime hours for apparently breaching protocol at discovering you two humans in our negación catch. So as you can clearly see, we've been doing our share of overtime work up at Dispatch," proudly explained Calibol. Technically he had been falsely accused of breaching protocol, but that was neither here nor there anymore.

"It's all the squads that were deployed on missions! They're back!" came the voice of a hollow from a standby squad, as all the standby squads and sentients of El Centro came rushing at basically the arrival of the "cavalry", all of them situating to the west of the tree that the three 'intruders' stood on.

The standby squads continued to voice their emotions at the recent arrivals.

"Tch, leave it to Dispatch to choose the most crucial time to finally come through for once,"

**"Did somebody say 'Dispatch'?" **came a now completely new voice. More buzzes sounded from the north-east revealing the much more numerous rest of the sentient Dispatch Gillian that had been left at Segunda Cárcel by Zoréno within the last hour. And flanking them were the entire rest of El Centro's squads that had been deployed there over the entire morning.

Calibol looked pleased the these further arrivals. "We 'came through for once' you say? Is this how you talk to Dispatch who's been singlehandedly running this entire base for the past three and a half hours?" he retorted to the nameless standby squad hollow to which of course there was a response.

**"And yet now's hardly the time for mere Dispatch grunts to be getting a big head or criticizing anyone," **came yet a newer voice.  
><strong>"Yeah, even though it's true they did a good job while El Centro can't even control their standby squads,"<strong> mocked another, as buzzes came in from the south west, the south-east, and the north-west.

"Oh joy, it seems the 'jailors' have decided to come out of their dark underground pits and grace us with their presences for once," deadpanned Calibol at the new arrivals.

It seemed that Klarradi's, Lía's, and Diañolo's sentients had converged from three corners of the base from their respective gaols, and joined the fray. In a similar vein to those who'd been left at El Centro during the battles, they had come out to investigate once the reiatsu died down in the only fight able to be properly sensed within the base. All in all, it seemed the bleeding wound that was Segunda Cárcel had finally healed. As things currently stood, this was the current fully mobilized force of Los Seis Pilares.

"Well this looks troublesome," sighed Ashido, "We could always Sentan Hakuja out of here if you want," he offered.

"No," Orihime disagreed, "You shouldn't use that technique that often Kanō-san. Plus, no matter where we go, I have a feeling they'll track us down. It seems to be their specialty. Plus we can't just leave Tarragó-san…right?" questioned Orihime unsurely, but Ashido got what she meant.

"He was fighting two opponents, but yes he's still alive. Knowing him, he'll probably be upset we're having this 'get-together' or something without him."

"If his fight finished like you said earlier and he didn't seem inured enough for you to go help him like you say you could've, then it's sort of his fault for staying down there doing who knows what," concluded an slightly amused Chad, "It's best we stay here and fight. There's still lots more info we can get out of these guys," he reasoned.

Ashido looked at them both like they'd grown masks, "I'm just fine reiatsu-wise but you two are spent and you know it. I'm glad both of you survived and managed to defeat your opponents," began to Ashido to which Chad grunted and Orihime laughed sheepishly, "But to you Inoue in particular, there's something I've noticed that I'm sure Sado has well. How are you supposed to fight with both no reiatsu and no hairpins for Rikka?" asked Ashido in his candid fashion causing Orihime to do a mental spit take.

Laughing nervously now, she began, "Um….well, the thing is….," she began as she noticed dirt falling from the forest ceiling. There was a brief triangular protrusion before an explosion occurred revealing the Santen Kesshun shield flanked by Shun'ō, Ayame, and Tsubaki who apparently had temporarily merged into the shield as Orihime often did herself before coming out after it burst through from the desert. The three non-Kesshun Rikka then flew down to Orihime's side.

The real sight was that still merged and trapped within the middle of the shield was Lía herself, albeit missing a good portion of her top left torso above the shield. There was a chorus of reactions among all Los Seis Pilares denizens at this reveal, especially Lía's sentients as the shield trailing the other three Rikka flew down and situated itself hovering behind Orihime half a meter above the tree branch.

"It's like I was trying to say, it won't be necessary to try to get any more answers out of these hollows. I said before that I accidentally fell down here from the desert, so my Rikka were stuck up there because of that. I didn't want to be the only one that didn't get any information, so I was trying to bring her down to us," explained Orihime.

_"She actually managed to incapacitate her opponent in such a way?" _marveled Chad looking back at the seemingly limp-headed unconscious adjuchas. No...She was actually awake!

Ashido however was stuck on other details, "Sorry, but I already implied my opponent was stubborn. I got nothing out of him. Even while holding back, he still fell susceptible to me and died."

"Same here," echoed Chad right on the shinigami's heels at realizing where the conversation had gone, "Well...sort of," he trailed looking away before looking back.

Orihime followed to where his eyes had wavered for that second and saw it in a clearing a far ways off; the gargantuan crater/skid-marks. Steam was still coming off of them profusely, seemingly even more than before.

_"Wha! His opponent…was completely destroyed? Sado-kun did that?!" _questioned a shocked Orihime, in a way echoing Chad's previous marveling. Chad noticed her brief wordless reaction. Ashido noticed his noticing.

"Sorry to interrupt again, but it looks like things are about to start for real this time. Bringing that adjuchas down here may have just catalyzed the situation," began Ashido at seeing the converging roaring hollows, sentients, and mindless.

"True. It's not like the Rikka didn't know that would happen. In fact, they knew this would happen regardless, so they came down here to help me since they knew I can't re-summon them through the sand," she explained their rationale, _"At least I don't think I can."_

"Release Warden Lía or die you _monsters_!" Lía's sentients were now addressing them directly from behind, preparing to begin a group-cero.

"Careful! Firing 'Lluvia Sangrienta' could hurt Lía-sama, and the Centro staff say that the shinigami can just appear and disappear and take people with him!_  
><em>  
>"Grrr!"<p>

"Darn them!"

Things seemed likely to erupt at any second. And they did, in the form of spiritual pressure crushing all the Los Seis Pilares denizens to their knees, Gillian and hollow alike.

_"This pressure!" _was what everyone thought in some variety of ways.

El Centro's woods were so silent you could hear a pin drop.

Right then and there, two Gillian simply erupted out of the ground, masks melting, black cloaks nearly completely burned away and eerie pale bodies underneath exposed and steaming. They were Vana and Maribel! The silence was extended even further, surprisingly not even a gasp.

A slow clap gradually rose in frequency and decibels as suspense grew with each one before a voice finally spoke out.

"Well, well, well what do we have here, a huge party that nobody felt the need to invite me to? So excuse me when I say it's my obligation to crash it. You seem like reasonable idiots, so I hope you understand," came the voice rising out of the newly erupted pathway, "And you three! You're practically the party _hosts_! How does that make _me _look when you're having all the fun without me!" complained the owner of the voice, its body finally becoming visible.

"Tarragó-san!" yelled out Orihime.

"Huh, no need to yell my name out girl. I get it," he continued waving one had passively, "You're mad that I interupted your dramatic reveal of the bird girl, but it was so bluntly intruding on my territory that I'm now also obligated to one-up you. Try not to take it personal."

Orihime was truly at a complete loss, "E-eh? What are you talki-"

"Picture it!" began Abdul theatrically, now completing his conversational hijack as he jumped ontop of Vana's prone form to use her as a makeshift podium, "I'm down in La Basurinera, _post-consumption of Celvia and Zoréno_," he added rather quickly at the end to the audial unbridled horror of the hollow and Menos audience, "And I'm gorging myself on everything in sight. I didn't realize that place went so much further down and back until I got way deep into it where I finally met some hollows different from the rest in the fact that they weren't chopped to pieces and dead. And ya' know? We actually started having a decent conversation until these two twin towers here decided to interrupt, griping about their 'Celvia-sama'" he said indicating Vana and Maribel.

"But from what I heard from my conversation partners, I'd decided not to put the whole base on my menu like I told Celvia and Zoréno I had. So instead of eating these two, I decided to spare them and use them as target practice instead!" he continued.

"You girl, you said getting info from these hollows wouldn't be necessary and revealed the bird girl. But now I say your half-dead captive is of no use. _She _won't be necessary. Instead my new 'acquaintances' have rather vibrantly expressed how they'd be more than happy to play that role! In fact they even claim to be old friends with you two in particular!" he finished as one single buzz of sonído in front of him landing ontop Maribel revealed just what he meant.

**"Why, ****_hello_**** there. How pleasurable a circumstance this is for a reunion, wouldn't you agree," **sounded that deep familiar ethereal disembodied voice.

There in the middle stood Aloban Vibrerra, and at his sides were Fátima Aragón, and Ferenancio ('Ferenan') Drenajería. Former Squad #336: 'Los Tranquilizantes' was back.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started: July 23, 2012 1:22 PM est.  
>Chapter Finished on paper: July 26, 2012 12:26 (didn't write down if it was AM or PM)<br>Chapter Typed: September 7****th ****, 9:13 PM – 2012, September 11****th**** , 10:21 AM  
>Revisions: September 17th, 9:52 AM; December 9th, 3:45 P.M.; December 23rd, 7:37 PM<strong>

Chapter title refers to chapter 14's title, 'Shooting Down the Satellite' along with the origin of that title which is in that chapter's Author Note. Chapter subtitle refers to Chad. **Speaking of chapter 14**, did nobody look at the link I posted in that chapter's author's note that goes to a diagram of the Los Seis Pilares base? I got zero feedback on that and on if it was helpful or not.

With this chapter out of the way that leaves 3 chapters left of the arc resolution. Remember we'll be at chapter 29 before the end of the year meaning next weekend will see **multiple** chapters.

Have you noticed the continued parallelism/dichotomy of Orihime and Chad this arc? For just one of many examples, both did something in their battles they couldn't control properly. Orihime with her mock-cero and Chad with Kidō. And that was something specific instead of a more general example. I'll touch more on the parallelism and dichotomy of the two around chapter 29's Author Note section.  
>_<p>

So it seems _almost _all the minor OCs had a reappearance this chapter. The unnamed rookie hollow squad of Tolsá, Clara, and their third member while not appearing this time, finally got named, "Barrón".

-Former Squad #336: 'Los Tranquilizantes', (yes I decided to bring them back after all, and their squad namesake will finally be revealed next chapter)

-Vana&Maribel reappeared. Both first appearing in chapter twelve, Vana had been sent to mobilize the squads by Celvia while Maribel had been sent to get Lía.

-Calibol&Dámian, the Dispatch workers from chapter nine and seen again in chapters fourteen and fifteen. Both had been sentenced overtime hours by Zoréno along with the other nameless sentients involved for apparently botching protocol at discovery of Chad and Orihime; Calibol getting blamed unfairly because of his idiotic co-workers. Dámian had his entire huge Gillian arm ripped off by Zoréno(in a rather comical introductory scene of Zoréno in retrospect), coincidentally the same arm Abdul was munching on in chapter twenty as was noted in that chapter. Any of this ring any bells? No? Ok moving on.

Did this chapter rake up too much long forgotten minor details such as the existence of the temporary standby squads? Then you probably forgot this line by Celvia in chapter 11 about them: "After mobilizing the elites as the vanguard, due to the short amount of time we have you will send them off immediately and then mobilize the rest of _all _squads present no matter their ranking, but leave the lowest tiers on standby," finished Celvia, and Vana was obediently gone in a buzz of sonído.

-One of the reasons the rumors had been so viral was because Squad three-three-six's specific mission to the human world was the first one performed by the base and as such had been confidential. You cold tell as much by what that lead member of squad fifty-two said: "That's right! We heard it was a rookie squad that got sent to take Squad three-three-six to La Basurinera because they got killed in some mission! That was true?! It was you guys?! And _that _was the mission?! Are you serious?"

**Quote: **"Back when he and Orihime were sparring earlier that morning, he'd wondered merely out of curiosity what would happen if he used the spell, and now he knew."  
>-Chapter 7 foreshadowing. I told you in the AN of chapter 22 that I had hinted it's ending in chapter 7. Well there's your explanation.<p>

**Quote:** "True. It's not like the Rikka didn't know that would happen. In fact, they knew this would happen regardless, so they came down here to help me since they knew I can't re-summon them through the sand," she explained their rationale, _"At least I don't think I can."  
>-<em>Seriously, I have no idea if Orihime could re-summon through solid objects in "certain" circumstances. It's interesting to think about.

**Quote:** "Ashido took further note of the mass usage of sonído.**"  
><strong>-If I don't forget to, I'll be raking up that little detail later.

OCs introduced in chapter:

Squad# 52: 'Brisa Verticales'(Vertical Breeze): I just wanted to show a four-man squad since squads can contain 3-6 people as I mentioned back in chapter eleven.

Star-masked Gillian: One of Celvia's sentients.

Ganolo: Hollow squad member. Got one second of screen time before being owned by a mindless Gillian's tongue(of which was inspired by the first appearing Menos Grande doing a similar action in the manga/anime). So sad. I felt I'd commemorate him by actually taking notice of him in this section so he's not forgotten.


	27. Tranquil Ascension

(12/28/12)Arc Resolution continues. This weekend is a triple-feature. This chapter gets published tonight(Friday), and tomorrow(Saturday), and Sunday also get their own chapters. With Sunday, chapter 29 will have been published and my promise will have been fulfilled of getting to chapter 29 before the end of 2012.

Read my profile for **updated** info on the hiatus.

I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. That is all.

* * *

><p>Tranquil Ascension<br>-

Disperse to Chaos**  
><strong>

**September 10th**

**9:27 A.M. Former Squad #336 "Los Tranquilizantes" has returned with a dramatic stage entrance of their own!**

"Why, _hello _there. How pleasurable a circumstance this is for a reunion, wouldn't you agree?" came Aloban's disembodied voice, vibrating out from his elongated tail. Orihime and Chad were in shock as they looked down at their former foes. The still on their knees from Abdul's pressure hollow audience were even more vocal in their shock. In just one morning this was the squad after all whose story had become the equivalent of an urban legend. And here was the squad, both not dead, and facing off against the very same humans of the same legend; humans who also had the local fabled shinigami on their side as well.

"But….but you were," stuttered Orihime with Santen Kesshun and its awake avian captive floating behind her.

"What? Dead? Still so naïve little girl. You should never count a hollow out unless you've smashed their mask in," chided Fátima. Once again Orihime had to mentally remark on how this hollow was calling her 'little' when they themselves didn't sound that much older.

"And you," she said gesturing to Chad, "Why the dopey look? You don't remember me? I was talking to you in the negación before I passed out. By now, I'm sure you understand at least a little at what I was trying to say," she spoke with conviction as Chad remembered just what she had said before looking back up with new understanding.

_"So these must the hollows they fought,"_ observed Ashido pensively, "_What's the adjuchas __**really**__ up to?" _he thought, glaring down at the smug Abdul through the only remaining eye hole in his gazelle mask.

"It's simple girl," began Aloban making to answer Orihime's confusion, "The nice specialized staff down in La Basurinera felt nice enough to heal and stitch our limbs back together. They needed to keep us alive in order to get what Tarragó here says you all have been looking for," he continued.

"Answers," he stated, "Answers such as how on the base's pilot human harvesting mission were a squad of elites such as ourselves defeated in such a way by humans who had no signs of injury at all. You see the bigwigs at headquarters—Piramidión in particular—want this type of vital information. And for our base Los Seis Pilares being the base to send not only spiritually aware cryptid-status humans with powers, but with data of their abilities and a transcript of the battle, it would look extremely good! Then there's the fact that a catch of your caliber was only caught in the negación accidentally _and_ on a shipment day at that. Along with the prior rumored catches of a shinigami and an adjuchas that we now know is Tarragó, you can see why the base was so high strung," explained mouthless Aloban gesturing his hands.

"Oho, but this is the best part. Luckily, just as the Basurinera staff got us back in physical working condition to 'extract' the data from us, you fools directly attacked Los Seis Pilares. How convenient," continued Aloban changing his tone and body language to a sinister one in that last line. Orihime noticed the anxiety rolling off of Chad at that motion.

"And now," began Aloban with his familiar body language for attacking.

"Now _what_?" interrupted Chad who was suddenly right down in front of Aloban with his highly damaged arm, outstretching it toward the obsidian hollow nonetheless.

_"So fast," _thought Orihime in shock still up on the tree branch.

"You're strongly clenched fist is made of brittle bone boy," spoke the mouthless Aloban cryptically as the up to then silent Ferenan's barbed toungue suddenly launched right at Chad from the right. Yet Chad expertly caught it and forcefully charged some form of blast and channeled it through the tongue up to Ferenan's mask as he had done with the hollow's horns previously.

Bladed Fátima made to attack at that instant, but found she was held in place.

"I wouldn't move if I were you. No literally, I'd be unable to move," mocked Tsubaki from behind her. They exchanged looks like old adversaries.

Ashido and Chad both noticed the use of both shunpo and kidō respectively by the Rikka.

At this, Aloban familiarly split his vascular macro-tubular tail in two, pointing the two ends at Chad and Tsubaki.

"Now, now, there will be none of that. It seems you've misjudged us. We're not here to fight you. There's no longer any incentive to do so. Besides, you seem strapped for reiatsu as is," he said, continuing his body language that indicated attacking except he instead sonído'd up to the highest quartz tree. Ferenan magnetically followed and Fátima effortlessly broke out of Sai and did the same as she looked back down to Tsubaki and Orihime with ambiguity.

As his teammates appeared on the branch beside him, Aloban continued.

"No, no fighting. We're simply here to announce our departure," he declared stretching his recombined tail out in front of him as spatial ripples formed at the end of it.

"Departure?" questioned Ashido now looking up at them near the forest canopy.

"You heard right," responded Aloban as his tail split one more, this time in an outward clawing motion as a garganta was formed from his seemingly tearing space apart.

"I seem to recall a certain adjuchas named 'Zoréno Yuterro' referring to us as 'former' squad. As such, what is left for us here?" reasoned Aloban turning towards his garganta.

"If you think we'll allow you to go back to the living world-!" began Chad.

"What? And kidnap more human beings? Ha! Don't flatter yourself human," interrupted Ferenan as Aloban continued.

"What could we possibly want with tasteless powerless humans? What do you take us for? Newborns?—Please tell me you hold us in higher regard than some newborn hollow! Harvesting was our job for that one mission. It ended up being an accidental success and an unfortunate one by the way things have turned out. So we plan not to let that hapless aura rub off on us. But one does not simply make a garganta to another part of Hueco Mundo. You must go through another area first. So yes, we _are _going to the human world, but it's simply the midway point for our new destination," explained an amused Aloban.

The words being exchanged continued to resonate throughout the hollow audience.

"ALOBAN!" It was Calibol speaking up and moving further up out of the crowd while still on his knees from Abdul's pressure. He had been their squad's platform monitor for their mission this morning after all and had known and heard of the squad in passing before even that, "Aloban! What do you think you're doing?! Have you lost it?!" shouted the incredulous sentient Gillian.

At this, Aloban turned away from the garganta, let out a disembodied chuckle before splitting his tail even more, aiming it down to the denizens of Los Seis Pilares and familiarly broadcasting to the entire present base similarly as he had in the living world.

"No my dear friend, _YOU _have lost 'it'. All of you have!"

At this, still captive Lía's blank silence turned to a knowing one as she closed her eyes while Aloban continued.

"You've been so conditioned that you've forgotten how to exist without artificially **constructed **order. You fear a hollow's life of chaos and thus you fear your own existence which naturally thrives on such. So you allowed yourselves to be 'absorbed' into La Pirámide thinking it could figuratively fill the literal void of the cavities within all your chests; that you could ascend in a controlled environment contrasting to your hopeless and fickle previous 'day by day living'. Yet again, all of you lost 'it' in the process. 'It' being 'instinctual will'. The 'instinctual will' to live what you shunned as 'day to day living'; that circular lifestyle to survive to get stronger to survive some more! Instead, you became content and accepting of the lie of 'controlled ascension'. That 'everyone can live'," vented Aloban.

"Fools! Life within chaos is survival of the fittest! La Pirámide again has **constructed** an insular bubble within the chaos that everyone has ran to for refuge. But if everyone survives, then nobody is truly fit," he began to conclude.

"With not only us being a former squad, but with Los Seis Pilares now being effectively dead, we now plan to ascend to the chaos once more."

"Hey Fátima, this'll be your first time right," slyly asked Ferenan at that moment in an out of earshot sidebar comment.  
>"Shut up Ferenan," simply answered the bladed hollow.<p>

"That goes for all of you as well," continued the broadcasting Aloban, "'No base means no squads.' The so called 'beacon of light and order' that was this base as Celvia called it was merely a bubble of its own," he went on as the hollows noticed his lack of '–sama' for Celvia, "And now that bubble has popped and the forest's chaos will fill in the vacuum and reclaim its territory. I'm only sad that I won't be around to see it."

"HEY! Aloban wrap it up will ya'. Geez," admonished a now cross-armed impatiently foot-tapping Fátima.  
>"Really, such an overly verbose lecture with no proportional substance," echoed a jaded Ferenan.<p>

Yet Aloban paid them no mind. Turns out he'd been getting to the end anyways as he turned back towards the garganta and began stepping toward it to the mental rejoicing of his teammates.

"And so we must thank you 'Alma Secta'. In your thrashing around in a foolhardy attempt to discover what is 'La Pirámide', you've in turn allowed us all a chance to depart from it. This is former Squad #336 'Los Tranquilizantes' bidding adieu to now former base 'Los Seis Pilares'. Farewell," his voice sounded for one last time as the garganta snapped shut behind he and his teammates.

The echoes of its slamming resounded through the stark silent audience.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started: July 26, 2012 1:42 PM est.  
>Chapter Finished on paper: (cont to last chapter)<br>Chapter Typed: September 11****th ****, 10:28 PM – 2012, September 11****th**** , 12:55 PM  
>Revisions: September 17th, 10:58 AM 2012<strong>

**General:** Chapter title plays on Squad 336's team name 'Los Tranquilizantes' which means 'The Tranquilizers'. They were selected for the human world raid partially because of their "tranquilizing" abilities(see chapter eight), thus their squad namesake. And now they leave the base, not in violence or wanting to fight their way out, but in peace; tranquilly.  
>The chapter subtitle <span>Disperse to Chaos<span> refers to how the concentrated "order" or in other words, "the base" will 'disperse' back to chaos. Along with Aloban's line saying they'll "ascend to the chaos".

Piramidión. It gets mentioned once again.

Zoréno finally got his surname mentioned thanks to Aloban's over-formalities. Zoréno Yuterro. How's that sound?

QUOTE: "The nice specialized staff down in La Basurinera felt nice enough to heal and stitch our limbs back together."

QUOTE: "Hey Fátima, this'll be your first time right," slyly asked Ferenan at that moment in an out of earshot sidebar comment.  
>-This quote harks back to the opening dialogue of chapter eight between the hollow trio. I had to wait this long to reference it again. I plan to bring it back to relevance.<p>

* * *

><p>Former Squad #336 'Los Tranquilizates' Refresher and Trivia:<p>

These three got their character profile in chapter 8's Author Note. But it's been a while, so in this section not only am I going to clarify some things said back in that section of chapter 8, but I will expand on them. Though this will not deal with the actual character design, etc, but instead will focus on the technical aspects of the hollow abilities.

For this former squad, you will get a sneak peek into my original conceptual notes for them since those notes had more tech specs. I'll type out a snippet from my original conceptual notes followed by repeated commentary on them.

"**[o][/o]**" stands for 'original conceptual notes'.  
>==================================================================<p>

For the first actual snippet and example:

**[o]**"Squad 336 3-man clandestine cell group. Speedy melee direct combat types, regeneration, tongue.**[/o]**

^(This squad was sent on the 'maiden' or first human harvesting mission of the satellite base 'Los Seis Pilares'. Was originally an all male group.)

**Fátima Aragón**: For the sake of grossly overgeneralizing, where Aloban is calm and collected, Ferenan is 'proud' and logical, then this girl is the hothead of the group. Brash, illogical, seemingly instinctive, yet has highly systematic technique and abilities at the same time.

Ability:'Glotón Semilla' ('Donyoku no shushi', Spanish for: "Gluttonous Seed", Japanese for "Seed of Greed")". By shooting a pike from her tail, it pierces and comes in contact with the victim's blood and liquifies, infecting the bloodstream causing side effects like nausea. A chemical reaction with the blood causes it to re-harden upon contact with it, after which it had already anchored itself in Orihime's case, both her human body, and the reishi that made up her spiritual body. It's "roots" bonded to her soul so that even if she was knocked out of her body, it would still be there ingrained into her as a plus soul.

Just like her body blades are actually 'thorns', the tail pikes are actually 'seeds'. Although they're no ordinary seeds, they still are in basic concept. The victim's body is the dirt, and the victim's reiatsu are its water and nourishment. Once one maxes out their reiatsu in an attack, it adapts to their output of power, releasing a corresponding amount of 'poison' (as it's called erroneously) out of its reishi-dense it is 'sedative liquid'. Most posion is designed to kill, but 'sedatives' simply incapacitate. With each reiatsu fluctuation of the victim, it adapts, continuously extending it's roots, growing from a 'seed' eventually into a flower, disrupting victims reiatsu usage by affecting the Saketsu (鎖結Binding Chain)/Chain of Fate (因果の鎖 Inga no Kusari), and finally the Hakusui (魄睡 Soul Sleep) leaving the victim powerless and comatose(sedated). Orihime overpowered this by accessing her life force ironically thanks to the flower's tampering with her Hakusui and was able to exhume too much reiatsu until the flower couldn't adapt and thus withered away(similar to if you over water a plant). This is the technique's rarely able to be exploited weakness.

**[o]**Posion needles, made of super dense reishi. Embedded in skin like anchors, bonding to your reiryoku. Reacts to reiatsu fluctuations, releasing more poison. Adapting to reiatsu of the victim. Needles function as target for main hollow(Aloban). Needles regrow like organic materials using reiatsu to grow back indefinitely. Every time they are destroyed they regrow, flowing throughout the body and soul eventually corrupting the soul chain/sleep, making powers falter, fluctuate, till she can't even heal herself.**[/o]**

^(Yes, before Fátima's plant theme was born, she originally had needles rather than tail pikes(seeds). But now seeing the original notes, you know why Aloban attacked the then seedling that was inside Orihime's stomach back in chapter eight. It grew back and into a full flower that much quicker. The original notes implied that the victim trying to destroy the seed/seedling/flower is futile. Fátima hinted at this when Tsubaki suggested cutting the then seed out of Orihime when the Rikka saw how it was affecting her and themselves back mid-fight in chapter eight.)

A certain aspect of Fátima is actually crucial to the next arc (if I can magically write it fast enough). It's alluded to in chapter eight and again in this chapter(27). I grudgingly put in a hint(s). I felt that if I didn't do it, then you guys would feel like I'm pulling this plot aspect out of nowhere when it finally comes. If I explained these concepts anymore, there will be spoilers. See chap 8 AN for more details on origin of her design, etc.

**Aloban Vibrerra: **He could care less of anybody's opinion of him, loves to study how things work. Is easily intrigued, but covert in his showing of extreme interest. Refined, sophisticated and 'polite'(as in gives you a wonderful compliment that actually insults you in seventeen different ways). Another main trait is his quaintness. Lastly is something I hope to have at least touched on with this chapter. I've thought of him a a moral relativist. A nihilist to be exact. I hope that can be seen from this chapter at least a little bit.

Ability: I pretty much pulled a Kubo and didn't fully explain his ability. I didn't see a place for him to explain his ability, and chapter eight already seemed overcrowded with explanation. I didn't want to resort to using narration to explain an entire ability, but I felt it's possible to get the basic gist of it from what you've seen. I know if I were a reader, I'd want to know exactly what he did to Orihime and Chad in his attack on them, along with why his tail had the effect on Tsubaki that it did. So yes I'm hypocritical. See chap 8 AN for more info on his character design origins. But again, here's the all-knowing original notes for a vague hint to his powers.

**[o]"**Spiritual combustion", vibrating tail, extremely powerful, can't regenerate**[/o]**

^(Quick trivia moment. You see above in the original concept notes where it says 'can't regenerate'? Let's now dig up some narration from chapter 8:

"The two humans must have coordinated somehow and knew that his brash partners would do anything to stop the them from having anything to do with him. So attacking him drew them all to one spot where the girl was ready for it all. He dared think that they even had managed to figure out his _weakness_."

So after all this time I finally clarify what exactly Aloban was refering to during his thinking that they might have managed to guess his weakness. His lack of regeneration abilities that is. It was actually hinted to early on in chapter 8 as well when Fátima and Ferenan jumped in the way of Chad and Orihime's second and much faster dual attack on Aloban. Though the story made it seem afterwards that they merely did it because they didn't want Aloban involved in their fights. Perhaps they then did do it to shield him after all, albeit that only being a minor part of their reasoning or perhaps not at all. We'll never know for sure. Perhaps protecting Aloban wasn't on their minds since Aloban _had_ already swatted away Chad and Orihime's _first_ dual attack although again it was much slower and weaker than their aforementioned second attack. So again, we can't say for sure

**Ferenancio 'Ferenan' Drenajería:** **[o]**Speedy, Long range & close(combat) combined**[/o]**

Ferenan is a proud hollow who is pleased with his abilities, yet not necessarily arrogant. Eager to gain power, and is very 'academic'. Hates being insulted and likes to test opponents and see what the are capable of. Loves the challenge of a stronger opponent. He's cautious, observant and resourceful. He knows he isn't the strongest, but he still has pride. He hates when people underestimate him. That can be interpreted as a 'subconscious insecurity problem' to a person like Chad on the outside looking in, but it's something more complex than that. He simply wants respect and wants his opponents to know he is stronger than them and understand their plight. After he feels he has proven himself he doesn't try to drag the fight out any longer. He's agnostic toward's life's(or afterlife's rather) meaning.

Ability: 'Bobina Sangre' ('Ketsueki indakuta', Spanish for "Blood coil", Japanese for "Blood Inductor")" is the name of his ability. It was based off of a method of wireless energy(electricity) transfer called 'Resonant Inductive Coupling'. By launching his tongue, he can pierce his opponent and siphon reiatsu. At the same time that happens he secretes a saliva agent that disrupts the opponents reiatsu by seeping into the bloodstream through the wound. The saliva agent is really a 'sleeper agent' as upon vibrating his horns at a certain frequency at a undefined later period of time, the saliva then responds and hardens into a node, taking any liquid it has diffused into with it(thus the "blood coil". 'Coil' references it being based off of electricity transfer which uses coils). Ferenan can then continuously take reiatsu through energy transfer at a certain rate. It get's complex so just go back to that part in chapter eight if you want more details. He can also extend his horns in a deadly piercing motion, but as Chad remarks, they are also 'fragile'. My original concept notes for Ferenan sort of referenced the original battle scene I had in mind.

**[o]**Combines(edit: close combat) with long range (by using) tongue, sucks reiatsu through incision. Tongue secretes saliva that hardens & transfers reiatsu through wireless energy transfer. Hardened nodes change frequencies when main hollow attacks the nodes, he speeds up the frequency of it which 'speedy-melee hollow matches, getting more energy.**[/o]**

^(In that snippet above, 'main hollow' refers to Aloban. 'Speedy-melee hollow' refers to Ferenan. So as you can tell in both Fátima's and Ferenan's original conceptual notes, I had Aloban attacking the seedling, and node respectively to speed up battle. He still does this to some extent in the actual chapter 8, but things ended up happening differently as you can see from how chapter eight played out)

Thanks for reading this far. I hope to share and comment on more original concept notes with you in the future.

* * *

><p>Read my profile for <strong>updated<strong> info on the hiatus.  
>Check my profile for future updates to the story's status post-hiatus.<p> 


	28. La Telavispa

(12/29/12) Tomorrow chapter 29 and the arc conclusion will be published. It's been a good run.  
>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. That's all.<p>

* * *

><p>La Telavispa<br>-

The Wasp Web

**September 10th**

**9:33.54 A.M. "Los Tranquilizantes" officially defects before all of the bases'****s eyes; Aloban leaving behind some choice words.**

Abdul, still standing atop Vana, was still looking up at where trio had recently departed while ironically reflecting on how they were a little too theatrical.

The members of Los Seis Pilares weren't taking things in such strides, still on their knees from Abdul's spiritual pressure.

"T-THEY JUST LEFT!"

"They can't just do that!"

Similar sentiments were voiced among the thousands of different individuals causing Abdul to look at up at them all.

"Seriously?! You tools are weak! Those three that just left are true warriors. Or at least they have the mindsets of them anyway," he said hopping off the prone now slowly awakening Vana up to a lower quartz tree branch, "But if you idiots are too afraid to suddenly be pushed back into the game of 'life or death' living, I can just put you all out of your misery right here and now!" he shouted as his reiatsu rose to crush them even further, forcing them on all limbs as they cried out in screams of pain.

**"TARRAGÓ!"**

The voice brought silence to the woods once more as all looked or at least tried to look toward Santen Kesshun behind the three Sectans standing on the middle quartz tree branch.

"Hmm?" questioned Abdul turning around from his tree which was in front of the one his teammates stood on to look up at still imprisoned Lía from his lower branch.

"Release them."

"Tch," scoffed Abdul as he lowered his pressure and crossed his arms. It was an understatement that everyone was shocked that Abdul had actually listened. One could suppose all you had to do with people like Abdul was use a firm tone.

"Haha! That's right! Warden Lía's here!" shouted a sentient getting back up as thousands of others did the same, along with echoing his enthusiasm.

"Yeah, as long as she's alive, we can still win! We can-GUUAAH!" shouted the speakers as he along with others were crushed right back down with new spiritual pressure.

Ashido, Chad, and Orihime turned around anew in surprise that the avian adjuchas still had that much energy left in her.

"Dummies! Who is this 'we'? 'We' are no more! What would happen even if by some miracle you defeated these people? After the idiotic celebratory high, then what? Who would be the first hollow to turn on the other? How fast would the domino effect occur?" asked Lía still suspended by Santen Kesshun to her somber audience.

"There's only one job left to do. No longer as a base, but as a personal request from me to all of you," spoke Lía, her pressure lowering and her voice getting harder to hear.

At this, all of Lía's sentients sonído'd around from the back to the front of the quartz tree the three Alma Sectans stood on so they could face her directly.

"What? What is it Lía-sama?!" they all asked in some way, shape or form with urgency.

A brief pause was held before she answered.

**"Carry out today's shipments," **she revealed to the all the shocked hollow soldiers and sentients who were only just getting back up from the pressure onslaught before she continued.

"Both Segunda Cárcel and Cuarta Cárcel are scheduled for simultaneous shipping in about two and a quarter hours. As far as headquarters knows, they'll be getting their pre-scheduled shipments of inmates from Segunda Cárcel. Cuarta Cárcel however is shippin' to 'La Telavispa'," she revealed frankly as everyone besides Díañolo's sentients looked stupefied at the latter reveal. Not only because the shipping schedules and locations weren't common knowledge to all the base denizens besides the individuals involved in the shipping, but because of the significance of the location she'd just spoken of and so they resultantly voiced their surprise to the varying intrigue of the Sectans.

"'La Telavispa?" questioned Chad looking back at Lía.

"It's the name of one of our 'mentor' bases so to speak," raspily admitted the adjuchas.

_"Another base?!_" thought Chad as the bombshell fell, _"So it's just like_ _Tarragó said before we freed him from his cell. This really is some form of grand army or empire? And she calls this 'La Telavispa' one of their 'mentor' bases at that? We've merely taken out a lowly outpost in the grand scheme of things, and barely even that?!"_

"Listen up! Los Seis Pilares is now defunct!" declared Lía her soprano voice momentarily regaining its reach so that all the audience could hear.

"So here are your options," she continued, "You either one; disperse into the forest, two; actually leave like Vibrerra's group, or three; report to Cuarta Cárcel to be shipped to 'La Telavispa'! Pick one and only one!" she declared with finality.

"Once there, they'll weed through you and determine whether to integrate you directly into their base or ship you to headquarters for reassignments! Depends on what headquarters tells them to do. Some of you would stay and some would get shipped to headquarters. Who knows," explained Lía. This was huge to the individual squad members especially. All of this had happened just this morning and 'morning' wasn't even over yet. A possible new base or having them get sent to headquarters? Squads possibly split up? Not definite since it was highly unlikely, but a possibility. Re-assignments? Especially the re-assignments; that could change everything they worked for, for better or for worse!

"Warden Halconero," came the Dispatch workers walking past the tree Abdul was now passively leaning on and converging onto the tree where Lía was being held.

"Why can't they just go through Segunda Cárcel? We are Dispatch workers. We can easily message Headquarters ourselves," the worker reasoned even-toned.

"Think for a moment, you. As a Type 2 base, 'La Telavispa' is the absolute best option to send everyone. They do the same weeding and sorting through process I talked of before with the inmates that routinely get sent to them, so it'll be that much simpler. And as I also said, Segunda Cárcel's shipments have already been accounted for. I can't just add you in and send you right to headquarters like a bunch of displaced refugees. As far as they know, they'll be receiving a shipment of specific inmates. Inmates that happen to include these people," she said referring to the Alma Sectans in front of her. The sentients finally got what she was trying to do.

"You're offering direct path to HQ for these people!?" accused a Dispatch worker to which Lía's sentients practically(and in some case literally) pounced.

"Hey! Shut up and trust Lía-sama!"

"She knows what she's doing!"

"Those people are already in the line-up of inmates for headquarters to receive. If they don't show up as planned then headquarter'll-," the sentient cut himself off at hearing what sounded like glass shattering as Santen Kesshun cracked and Lía fell onto the tree branch with a sickening crunch as all of her sentients cried out in disdain.

"It couldn't be sustained any longer. I'm out of reiatsu for good this time," admitted Orihime holding her left arm at her side as the Kesshun trio along with Tsubaki, Ayame and Shun'ō forcefully returned their respective hairpin pieces as she went to pick them up.

Lía managed to sit up anyways.

"It's fine! Don't worry about me!" she shouted and protested as one her sentients picked her up in its hands anyways so she could address the rest of the populace including the Dispatch sentients. She was presented to them as she spoke once more.

"It's fine. I don't care what your opinions of my requests are. And I know not every hollow here agrees with my decision. It's true that even without Zoréno , you're fully capable of even sending an S.O.S straight to headquarters.…TCH! Well just report it all to La Telavispa that I told you all not to message headquarters. And that it was I who told you all to just carry out the shipments to headquarters as if the base was still fully functional! Get them to brand me a traitor for all I care! And why should I anyways? I'll be dead by the time they do something about it!"  
>The declaration hit home among the base populace. This really was the end of Los Seis Pilares. It was surreal.<p>

_"She's…trying to get us there without them knowing the full level of the situation so they won't be prepared for us. But why? What is she up to? Why help us? What is she trying to gain," _mentally quizzed Ashido.

"But of course to you Dispatch workers, I'd advise you not to even reveal you were able to disobey my request to not report to headquarters right now. If you do, or if they find out by themselves because somebody, even some random hollow from the squads couldn't keep their mouth shut, then all of you will be held accountable. But at the same time, I doubt a certain adjuchas down there would allow you to even send a distress call in the first place. Lest you ruin the idiotic element of surprise he seems to love so much that they could have the opportunity of having when finally arriving at headquarters," she reasoned partially referencing Alma Secta's initial "surprise" arrival to El Centro with their riding of the Dispatch workers who'd been temporarily subjugated by Abdul.

"Like I said at the start, this isn't an order, but simply a personal request. If you go along with it, only if somebody can't keep their mouth shut will you face consequences. If you ignore my request, you _will _face consequences here and now. Your choice," she leveraged expertly as Abdul looked up at her with the narrowest pensive eyes of the century, arms crossed and tapping his left tricep with his fingers.

_"What game is this bird playing? Or what one does she think she's playing?" _he questioned suspiciously. Dubiosity dripped from his being.

"ALRIGHT!" shouted one of the apparent leaders of Lía's sentients as they all turned around to face the Dispatch workers and the rest of base populace, "ALRIGHT! You heard her! Quit standing around! Let's get preparations underway! All hollows, Menos or not, choosing to stay instead of defect, report to Cuarta Cárcel immediately. But specifically to all of Zoréno-sama's workers, come back with us to Segunda Cárcel and bring his unsentients with you! Most of you were there in charge of repairs so things'll go more efficiently this way! Meanwhile, Matrasa-sama's sentients, go back to your gaol and get things started to prepare the shipping for both your inmates and the squads and Tamoyo-sama's sentients'll join you; and after they help up Vana and Maribel and get their remaining members out of La Basurinera, so will Celvia-sama's sentients!" ordered the Gillian with authority as Lía managed to shakily stand up in its hand and make a weak fist yet shout out with a powerful piercing voice.

"There's lots of work to do! So get to it already!" she finished, her eyes briefly glancing down at Abdul before proudly continuing.

"We ship at noon!"

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

**Chapter Started on paper: July 27th, 2012; 9:48 AM est  
>Chapter Finished on paper: Before midnight July 27th<br>Chapter Typed: September 11th, 2012; 1:04 PM est- 4:06 PM est  
>Revisions: September 17th 2012, 11:18 AM est; December 9th 2012, 4:19 PM est<strong>

Quick English-Spanish translation lesson:  
>Spider="Araña"<br>Fabirc/Web="Tela"  
>Spiderweb="Telaraña" (Yes that's an actual Spanish word just like Spiderweb is in English)<br>Wasp="Avispa"

So, if Spiderweb="Telaraña", then Waspweb would be "Telavispa". At least that's how I see it. Language is a puzzle, and I like to put new pieces together.

Trivia: Existence of other bases were hinted at by Zoréno in chapter twenty when he mentioned 'other locations'.

QUOTE: "As a Type 2 base, 'La Telavispa' is the absolute best option to send everyone."  
>-'Types' will be explained at a later time.<p> 


	29. Transgarganta

(12/30/12) This is it you guys. I call it the spiritual successor to chapter eight in that it ends an arc. I'm still editing the 'Quick Notes' and 'Quotes' sections of the Author Note, among other things in the Author Note as well.  
>(1231/12) It's the 1 year annivesary of chapter eight's publishing and the the Expository Arc's ending. I've updated the Omake/Side-Story S.O.S.! Distress Call section, along with General, 'Quick Notes', and 'Quotes' sections. 'Character Profile' section is on the way. You'll know it's here when I've edited these past two sentences to reflect it's arrival.  
>I Don't own Bleach. Tite Kubo does. Also, <em>unbeta'd<em>. That is all.

* * *

><p>Transgarganta<br>-

Inverted Stripes 2

**September 10th**

**11:37.52 A.M. Alma Secta takes a reprieve back in their makeshift headquarters. A new calm before the storm.**

During the two and a quarter hour wait time, Alma Secta had returned to their own base of Ashido's cave, humbly preparing for a new chapter in their quest. The adjuchas Lía had been taken by her sentient Gillian to her late brother's gaol, Segunda Cárcel. Currently unmasked Ashido was employing more healing kidō to a battered and bruised Chad's skin and right arm especially, along with using his other hand to touch up and restore reiatsu to a sleepling Orihime. She seemed to have healed herself but strangely missed some specific areas completely for some odd reason.

Abdul was further away, leaning on one of the walls that lined the exit path, and was looking out into the Menos Forest.

"Not just her reiatsu, but she was much more damaged than she let on. She should've gotten immediate attention. You can tell for example that there used to be an actual structurally sound collar bone right here. Tch. And my so called 'healing kidō' is so below par right now, that it's embarrassing,"

"Sheesh Doctor Shinigmai. If that's your diagnosis for the girl, then I'm scared to know what it'll be for Sado who only has almost his entire top layer of skin burnt off on his torso. Oh and those darn pesky pieces of his actual arm just hanging off for fun," sarcastically replied Abdul without turning around to look at them.

"Don't worry about Inoue. Have you forgotten how she heals with her Rikka? Once you heal her, she'll be able to finish physically healing herself and then she'll just have to rest like she is now and her reiatsu'll restore itself.

"So I see," answered Ashido, "But what about you?"

"Huh?"

"Out of all three fights I monitored with Reiraku(Spirit Threads), yours worried me the most. When I first met you, your spiritual pressure quality seemed ambiguous, as if it was 'wasn't concrete' and going through some changes. But in that fight it's like your reiatsu composition not only abruptly continued changing even more, but began transforming entirely. Before, it had a blunt powerful presence as if it was 'explosive yet refined', but during your fight it changed to feeling like a 'booming perpetual engine'. And the thing is, even now it still feels that way, just that the 'engine' has slowed down as you aren't fighting," explained Ashido trying to put his observations into words as he had Chad's full attention.

"But it's weird because reiatsu doesn't just change composition like this normally. It's almost as if your power is trying to burst out its constraints and develop into something else-"

"Shinigami, just come out with it and say that you're trying to say his reiatsu is going through puberty with an abnormal pituitary gland or something," drawled Abdul to the surprised silence of the other males.

"Well now, that's one way of putting it adjuchas. But it's not just his reiatsu, but his reiryoku itself."

"Whatever," curtly began Abdul, "What we all _really _want to know about is the skid marks. I saw those things," said Abdul as if actually accusing Chad of trying to hide them, "Those things were steaming for like twenty minutes, and that was after I got up there late! What the heck is that all about? You really vaporized the kangaroo woman?" he asked, back still to them yet in a voice as if impressed causing Chad to sigh and pause before speaking.

"It was something I couldn't control. In that last moment it was either me or her," said Chad remembering once more Captain Kyōraku's quote to him about such situations of when souls are close to death_, "And my punch was finally faster(than hers), but at a price," _concluded Chad in his head looking down at his arm. Ever since then he'd had no feeling in it whatsoever. He had no idea how he'd even moved it back when making to attack Aloban and actually doing so to Ferenan earlier before they left.

_"He talks about the 'last moment', but there were many times before when his reiatsu spiked and was reflected in his spirit thread, but that final punch really was something else. His spirit thread all at once elongated and ballooned as if it was going to explode for just a second before returning to normal!"_ reflected Ashido remembering how Klarradi's bizarre double-banded spirit thread had then faded to nothingness accordingly as if the sewing of her 'thread' had come undone.

_"Yeah, my punch was finally faster, and speaking of 'faster'," _thought Chad as he mentally segued into his next words, "Was it you that taught Inoue shunpo?"

Ashido sighed and looked over at Orihime who he was still touching up with kidō.

"Earlier after escaping the gaol and coming here, while you were resting and the adjuchas went out scouring the base's perimeter I only told her the basic mechanics. I didn't really 'teach' at all really," revealed Ashido remembering the 'textbook' she'd shown him from her drawstring bag.

"Besides the one she uses for offense that'd gone out after our adjuchas here," he said gesturing to Abdul, "She had the remaining five of her 'Rikka' out and she and they all looked earnest together as I did a 'live demonstration'; a grand show of shunpo'ing forward and backwards again a good one and a half meters each, probably less than that. It's not like she asked for more than that anyways," admitted Ashido candidly to a sweatdropping Chad. The cave wasn't that spacious after all, even though they could've easily gone out to the rock outcropping outside.

"But I could tell they weren't just watching me or listening to my directions, but actually sensing the way I exerted and manipulated my reiatsu to do the pretty much 'abridged' flash step. She thanked me for my demonstrating and brief explaining of it and then expressed more interest in my use of kidō, actually _revealing _that her 'sensei' had actually taught her 'Jū Kyūseishu'," revealed Ashido himself.

"'Jū Kyūseishu'?" asked Chad, _"And more importantly, 'sensei'?" _he thought, puzzled at the end.

"Jū Kyūseishu, or 'The Ten Saviors' is sort of what the Shin'ō Academy affectionately calls the first five of the standardized Hadō and Bakudō spells. They're seen as fundamentals and can be used from everyday use to basic survival along with progressing into more difficult kidō," explained Ashido, "But she let me know she'd only successfully used three of the ten spells with 'complete' success up to then. She implied apparently she'd undergone something of a crash course," he continued.

"So you understand my surprise when I actually saw the **_Rikka _**she used for offense, actually perform not only shunpo, but incantationless bakudō kidō on the bladed hollow from that trio earlier that left in the garganta. Granted, it was one of the three spells she said she'd already used herself before and didn't perform it's full function properly, yet that's beside the point because it was the Rikka performing it!" exclaimed Ashido dubiously.

"Now for the shunpo, again, I could easily tell it had imitated me from the same demonstration I put on for Inoue-san and the rest of her Rikka earlier. But the thing is, he wasn't even present for that; he was still out 'making rounds' with our adjuchas here," he said gesturing to Abdul in the exit path once more before sighing and putting on a knotted extrospective look.

"All I have to say is that _whatever _happened up in her battle on the desert, she changed as much as you apparently did during yours—comparatively anyways," he said adding the last part at the end as if clarifying himself as he moved his healing hand to a different area of Orihime's body.

_"Still, to extrapolate from that truncated little flash step I did and go a further distance like it did was impressive. It still needs to see proper form of a complete flash step, but it was good nonetheless," _thought Ashido as a thought pricked his mind once more, "And speaking of _her_ speed, _you _seem to have picked up some speed of your own. Tell me man, how does one casually go about 'picking up speed' in a fight? Do you just decide, 'OK, I'm going to be faster starting now'," joked Ashido.

"That's my question!" injected Abdul at the end as if saying 'forget the attention-hogging girl, we want to know about _you_', as he propped himself off the wall he'd been leaning on and turned around to finally face them, "I noticed you using it at first on the way back! Really though your speed, it's similar to sonído, but definitely isn't. What's the deal? Some kinda speed tech unique to humans or somethin'?"

_"No, Ishida definitely has that covered,"_ thought a slightly amused Chad. The adjuchas was finally being more overt in his curiosity of things after all this time compared to how it was at first. So Chad paused a while, not looking up from his right arm and wearing an introspective expression as he answered, "I..I don't know. I don't understand it myself," he admitted, "It's like once that initial 'unrest and rustling' of my power got into that 'perpetual engine' stage as he called it, I could keep up with her speed much better. But the weird thing is, that initial 'unrest and rustling' didn't even start until I got negacióned here to Hueco Mundo," answered Chad to Ashido's realization.  
><em><br>"So that's what the recent 'changes' were that I first sensed when we met!" _mentally remarked the shinigami as his prior observation was answered.

"Heh, don't worry about it," began Abdul anew after a slight silence, "Don't worry about it for now man. This place has a knack of making people high-strung. I mean just look at the shinigami over there," he said gesturing to Ashido, "He went from "high-class shinigami" to mask-toting 'hangin' with the hollows' savage-status," mocked Abdul.

"Oh? I didn't realize you felt such shame in your species adjuchas. Are you really the same person who complained earlier about apparent 'shinigami favoritism'?"

"Are _you _really this sucky at sensing sarcasm?" retorted Abdul before looking at Chad, "Anyway, you get the point I was trying to make right Sado? Don't let this place get to you," he spoke, now walking in from the exit path.

"This person here," he said arriving at Orihime's prone form, "She already vowed she wouldn't let it get to her," he explained as they all looked down at the human girl before he continued.

"The shinigami and I get it," he stated simply, "You're trying to figure out what you are. Both of you sort of implied there were actually more of you back after you first broke me out of my cell and again up on the desert, but there can't be _that much_ humans that're spiritually aware _and _have unique powers. So with nobody to relate to, you're going through an identity crisis or something. But one can say the girl has it the same way since she's also human with powers unique to her. And speaking of identity crises, she even has six extra identities to deal with to boot. Oh, but then you argue back saying her 'identities' and powers and techniques, they all have names. She seems to be bolted down on a straight path forward, while you're just floating in the middle of nowhere. That's how you 'feel' right?" asked Abdul with the full attention of his sitting down audience of two as Chad simply looked up at him.

"Well then stop 'feeling', because you're a complete idiot and I have no sympathy for you if you feel that way. Don't envy the girl's apparent 'straight path'; the way it seems like she's 'on rails*'. It only _seems _that way. Even what seems like the straightest and flattest distance eventually curves over the horizon. No path is 'straight', certainly not hers. Even I can tell that from the short time knowing her. Look at her again," demanded Abdul, "Those are more than just disgustingly large sleep marks under her eyes. With her unique abilities, relatively from almost nothing, you can see how she struggled with no predetermined path for her to follow compared to if she were a shinigami or a hollow like me. You can see how she's had to find a way to create a path of her own to follow," vented Abdul.

"But as you are now, one could further argue that even with all her uniqueness, that you're still probably more lost and confused about yourself right now than she _ever _was or even could have possibly been—And yet!" stated Abdul cutting to a interjection, "And yet despite that, she still sees you as a standard, someone not to fall behind and keep herself equal to like a rival or something. I can't be the only one who kept seeing how she'd lose focus and stare off at that giant skid-mark you made. And there's been many more times before that, which proves what I'm saying," said Abdul basically proselytizing his observations at this point.

"So we have a lost person, that's actually on even ground or even higher than someone practically finding out more about themselves every second? Truthfully, if and only if things keep going at this rate, I have to predict that your glass ceiling is gonna end up being much higher than hers. But you better not let that go to your head, not just because it's a conditional prediction but 'cause even if it ends up being right, glass ceilings are glass! They can be shattered!" emphasized Abdul as Chad took in all he was saying surprisingly in stride, occasionally nodding his head in agreement.

"Tch. Man today I've lectured way too much—you get what I'm saying right?!" yelled Abdul after remembering in annoyance his fight with Celvia and Zoréno, "I don't know what's up with your power, but if you want that prediction to hold true, you gotta start finding out ASAP-"

"So that he can start on his own path right," interrupted Ashido, "Note to self: 'Schedule adjuchas for more motivational speaking'."

"Tch. If it's a 'note to self', then keep it _to _yourself and keep yer mouth shut," reprimanded Abdul, though the shinigami didn't really take the his witty wisdom to heart.

"Sado, there's one more thing the adjuchas mentioned about Inoue-san that I don't get. When he spoke of her having 'six extra identities' in reference to her Rikka, it reminded me of an initial question of mine back when we first came to my cave. 'If they really are her manifested power, and she herself being a female," began Ashido.

_"Where's he going with this," _thought a sweatdropping Chad.

"Why then are only two of them female and the rest male—and one of said males having an entire aspect of battle to himself at that?" added Ashido at the end.

The minds of the audience were collectively blown. Both of them had obviously realized as much, but never really questioned in that way. What exactly did the six eccentric Rikka egos directly say about the character and personality of the Rikka wielder herself?

"Tch. It seems like you're suggesting shinigami can't have opposite gender zanpakutō. I didn't think 'power manifestation' had gender bias," quipped Abdul getting over the momentary revelation. Whether Ashido was surprised the adjuchas seemed knowledgeable on zanpakutō wasn't apparent as he responded.

"That's not what I was suggesting, and Inoue-san isn't a shinigami. With how literally her Rikka manifest, one would think her gender would at least have _some _type of influence. But-"

"ACHOO!" sneezed Orihime before continuing in a flurry of consecutive sneezes that woke her up; Ashido expertly and knowingly dodging her head as she jerked further up with each sneeze causing Chad's respect for him to rise. At the last sneeze she fell back in her sleeping position with her back to the ground.

"Well it's about time! I was actually betting against myself wondering how long it would take for you to sneeze," exclaimed Abdul.

A weary Orihime was still wiping her eyes as she then sat up, her vision becoming clear at his statement.

"Eh? Y-you guys were talking about me?" she asked as if still half asleep as all her Rikka were summoned.

"Oh not much really," admitted Ashido, "Just how you lied to me about not being tired earlier the last time we were here, claiming you'd 'already slept'," teased Ashido with a comically completely serious face. Predicatively, Orihime took it to heart with a blush.

"B-but it's true, I _had _slept! But I told you I was too anxious to even think about sleeping any more back then. But after the fights were over I guess my body made up for lost time," she said now sitting up completely as Ashido removed his healing hand.

Her body 'made up for lost time'? Her body must have a extremely literal way of doing things then since this was the girl who'd immediately began snoring within stepping one thousand meters of Ashido's cave mid quartz-tree jump on the way back. Ashido had to frantically catch and carry her the rest of the way there, thinking her to be narcoleptic.

"We still have a little while before they summon us back to the gaol Inoue," began Chad as Shun'ō and Ayame wordlessly began Sōten Kisshun on his arm causing Ashido to quickly retreat his other healing hand from there as well.

At hearing the update, Orihime stretched and yawned heavily without covering her mouth, causing Abdul to look on in contempt.

"Heh. This is why I'm glad I don't have such a weak body function. 'Sleeping'? You might as well play dead," he mocked.

"So you're a natural insomniac now? Tell me more about how you _didn't _say 'Can't a guy get some sleep around here?' back in your cell when you made all the prisoners be quiet with your reiatsu," retorted a grinning Shun'ō speaking up from his corner of the healing shield. The Kesshun trio and Tsubaki then got into their 'bipedal' forms. Abdul grunted at this and crossed his holed arms.

"I clearly meant 'eye-resting' sleep back then, not 'play-dead cadaver slee-'"

"Sleep is sleep!" interrupted Tsubaki.

"Who told you to talk?!" shouted Abdul making to charge a cero to which nobody even flinched.

"Hmm. It's getting noisy so I'll take over since the adjuchas does such a poor job at explaining himself," began Ashido, covertly picking up and placing his damaged gazelle mask within Sōten Kisshun after seeing what it was doing for Chad's arm as the shield willfully accepted it.

"I explained myself just fin-!"

"The truth is," continued a bold faced Ashido as if Abdul hadn't even been protesting, "That the adjuchas is shockingly correct," he finished causing more protests with his word usage.

"Of course this is just as far as I know, but it seems most hollows don't 'sleep' in the conventional sense. Unlike humans, pluses, or shinigami, most hollows seem to lack REM sleep," revealed Ashido as if shrugging off-handedly.

"They..don't have REM sleep? So they're like fish?" asked Lily floating next to Chad with a puzzled dubious voice as if cocking her head to the side like a confused dog.

But that particular comment jump-started Orihime's infamous thought process.

"Wait, wait! So if hollows sleep like fish, then what do the _fish _that _become_ hollows sleep like? They must not sleep at all!" concluded Orihime with a face of complete sudden and for some reason grave clarity before then imagining a dramatized still shot of an anthropomorphic muscular fish violently elbowing the mythical Sandman in the face.

This was what Chad had come to dub as 'Inoue Logic'. The times where Orihime's vivid imagination conjures up an appropriately sweat-drop inducing question, idea, or scenario that actually makes the listener say something along the lines of, "_Hey, wait a second, that actually makes sense!" _thought Chad actually reflecting on her words.

It's been a while Inoue Logic. It's been a while.

"Enough about my 'frequent sleep patterns', you're starting to creep me out! It's like you people have one track minds or have you forgotten already we're supposed to be at the headquarters in **less than twenty minutes** and we _still _know squat!"

This snapped Orihime out of her ongoing mental simulation of Round Sixteen of the Galactic Championship fight of "Fishman vs The Sandman".

"Ah! Tarragó-san's right! Is this really okay? We still haven't gotten concrete answers to anything. I actually have _more _questions now!" she said, exasperated as her healing shield moved to contain now Chad's entire body after specifically finishing his arm, "Apparently the name of the headquarters place is 'La Pirámide'? The adjuchas I fought mentioned it and that one called Aloban did too. You guys said on the way back here that you heard them say it in your fights too right?" she continued with the same voice.

"Yeah, what is this, some little sewing circle/book club? Why don't we just go down there and make them tell us everything directly!" said Tsubaki reprising his self-made role as 'the voice of reason'**.

"Hey, annoying fairy creature. The normally-sized individuals are trying to speak so take your friends and all go collectively buzz off," said Abdul in an even tone causing a certain some of the other Rikka to protest at being likened to Tsubaki; which of course angered the offensive-purposed Rikka in return.

Ashido seemed amused by their antics, "Inoue-san, you may need to do some stretches and take a walk outside to the edge of the cliff and back so you can wake up fully," he suggested sincerely and not in a jeering fashion, "Did you forget they said to 'expect a debriefing before we embark'?" he revealed as the memory came back to Orihime, "And speaking of 'answers' adjuchas you seem to be holding out. What did you talk to that hollow squad about? I seem to remember you said you had a 'nice conversation' with them. And then you bring them out back there claiming they would replace our need to have the bird adjuchas for answers only for them to just up and leave."

The standing up Abdul seemed non-fazed at this, "Heh. I pretty much already said what they told me when I said they convinced me not to eat every last hollow in that base like I was gonna do at first because like I said, doing that would be fruitless. It's again why I didn't eat those two Gillian when the barged in on our conversation with their idiotic nagging of 'Where's Celvia-sama!?'," said Abdul grimacing at the memory as his audience looked up at him.

"Ya' see, eating Gillian and hollows'll do nothing for my strength. Maybe increase it by thousands of thousandths, but hardly. For my strength to increase at all noticeable anyways, I an adjuchas myself, need to eat other adjuchas. And they're not plentiful to come by. It's why I was starving before I got captured. It's like I said in the cell, but with more detail, the three plights of a Menos, the ever-threat of starvation along with stagnation and regression," continued Abdul.

"But those little hollows told me some interesting info. That rather than settle on Celvia and Zoréno and my anger at the base, I should set my sights on this headquarters place, seeing as it apparently has the self-proclaimed largest collection of adjuchas within all of Hueco Mundo," he revealed. Whether his audience was surprised he didn't give them time to show it as he went on.

"You see, the potential gap in power levels between adjuchas are huge. One adjuchas can easily outclass another," he continued as Ashido injected himself into the conversation.

"You two are aware of Seireitei enlisted ranks correct?" he asked the two humans as they nodded their heads to the further genuine surprise of the shinigami.

"Well theoretically according to textbooks, an 'adjuchas' can range at its very weakest from sub-lieutenant levels to potentially being able to challenge a captain," he said, continuing before they could react, "Take that with an extremely large grain of salt though. Even after long since graduating from the Shin'ō Academy, I'm still trying to figure out what exactly 'captain level' is. It's a vague term and textbooks love vagueness," finished Ashido closing his eyes as Abdul processed what he said before speaking to Chad and Orihime.

"But still that's exciting because both I and I'm sure the shinigami know as well; that these 'opponents' that we fought this morning were only low-level garbage-tier adjuchas."

Orihime and Chad were finally given time to show shock. That's understandable. Just this morning they had thought what they now knew were called "Gillian" was the extent of hollow evolution after all (well not the strength, but the form factor of Gillian anyways). And if elite adjuchas could challenge captains, then what was this "third stage" of Menos Evolution Abdul had mentioned back in the cell? What's more was the question of just how strong could the arrancar then potentially get? They both took in Ashido's lack of reaction as confirmation of Abdul's words.

"Sure the adjuchas says it like that, but still despite their weakness, their hollow abilities were definitely unusual and extremely top notch. Not just my opponent, but everyone else's too judging by what I could make out through Reiraku. And going by how much this base seems to have affected the local population, and the sheer unnatural amount of sentient Gillian in one spot? Its obvious each and every adjuchas, Gillian and hollow included that were involved in that base's operations were all specifically handpicked and sent here. There truly is something grander going on," responded Ashido adding his own take on things.

"Still though, what that Aloban guy said about 'survival of the fittest'? I told you guys as much back in the gaol when you first broke me out, but he said something further that was interesting; that 'If everyone _survives_, then no one is truly _fit_.' In that case, if we're going to a place with the most adjuchas, going by that logic, most of them are garbage. I only want the attention of the top percentile! I'll settle for no less."

"You don't realize that what that hollow said can also be taken with an extremely large grain of salt as well. With the pure quantity of adjuchas in general that they apparently have, even if the percentage of them that are 'top-tier' or 'elite' are relatively low, they could easily still have a vast amount of them," said Ashido as realization dawned in everyone's minds. In Orihime and Chad's minds in particular they realized they could be dealing with hundreds, thousands, or even order of magnitude's more of beings that could "challenge" a captain.

"Whatever the case, things'll be much different than they were here. After we figure out all the answers we want, you two could always return home," continued Ashido.

At that remark Orihime shook her head and slowly stood up.

"Remember the decisive battle Soul Society has this winter that I told you about? If we can't handle these hollows _now_, then we'll be of no use in the battle _then_. We need to see this through till the end," began Orihime turning to look up at Abdul.

"Tarragó-san, you made fun of me when I said I wanted to make sure human kidnapping by these hollows stop from happening ever again by saying that 'by my logic I should destroy all hollows because more hollows _eat_ humans than _kidnap_ them'," she continued, "But here's the thing about that. Stopping hollows from _eating _humans? That's the Shinigami and Soul Society's department. Stopping hollows from kidnapping more humans like Sado-kun and I were? That's long since been made into our personal issues," she vented.

"If 'Los Seis Pilares's' raid on the human world where they captured us really was their first raid like Aloban-san said and that there are more bases out there, I can only worry that Sado-kun and I aren't alone and won't be the last. Not to mention our powers made us more valuable for some reason. And since we _all _initiallywere getting 'shipped' to this 'La Pirámide', it's my personal mission to go there and find out why we were getting sent there and how to stop the whole process."

"Hm," Chad affirmed simply, standing up as well as Sōten Kisshun dispelled, he now fully physically healed(His reiastu still had to fully recover just like Orihime).

"Well now, seems like you two gave more thoughts to your reasoning since we last talked. And you already heard _my _vendetta. That just leaves you shinigami. We broke you out. The local menace has been taken out and you're back at your cave. So're you just taggin' along now or what?" mocked Abdul with his arms akimbo, prompting Ashido to pick up his newly healed mask and stand up with everyone else.

"Well, I've already been involved this far. There's no need to randomly leave the team at this point and that goes for all of us. And truthfully," he continued getting some form of barefaced expression before covering it as he put on his mask, "I can't do that anyway because I feel I'm indebted to you all for helping me escape that cell and mostly I'm curious about this 'La Pirámide', reasoned Ashido, _"Because it sounds strangely like…," _he trailed off mentally, putting the thought outside his mind.

"Plus we already explained last time we were here that I have the same motive as Inoue-san and Sado. To find out why 'my kind', a shinigami, is seen as a good 'catch' for these hollows," concluded Ashido.

"So it's…settled then," asked Orihime hesitantly, "Er..or should I say re-settled?" she finished sweat-dropping at the redundancy as she re-sealed all her Rikka and went over to pick up the drawstring bag she'd left in the cave earlier that morning.

BUZZ!

The sound came outside the exit path at the cave's entrance.

"T-ten minutes to shipping! First and last call!" shouted an extremely nervous female hollow messenger," as she made to buzz away.

"Wait! Don't leave!" shouted Ashido to the terrified hollow who'd turned statuesque.

"Hey! Quit quivering and straighten up your spine! The shinigami's sucks at explaining himself," began Abdul blatantly tongue-in-cheek, "But he's _trying _to say 'how do you expect to make it back there for your own shipping in only ten minutes? Hurry up and get in here!" demanded Abdul.

The hollow realized the truth of his words and decided to inch into the cave due largely to the lack of killing intent Alma Secta was giving off. Still nervous, she arrived as they all got into a circle for some reason and saw the much smaller Orihime meekly smile up reassuringly at her. She dared not ask questions as Ashido seemed to close his eyes behind his mask.

The air in the cave went off a wavelength for a second before ethereal ribbon like threads popped out of the ground everywhere.

"_This _is Reiraku," revealed Ashido.

"Tch. I get it. Like a shinigami's version of pesquisa," remarked an unimpressed Abdul.

"Good analogy," answered the still concentrating Ashido as he opened his eyes behind his mask and located what was apparently the thread that represented Lía's reiryoku. While all the other flowing ribbon-like cloths were wide and broad, hers was skinny, corroded and dilapidated.

"She's barely hanging on by a thread at this point," said a worried Ashido as he grabbed the intangible ribbon-like material so it spiraled around the entire group in the formation dome of Sentan Hakuja. Right before their departure one could make out a single exclamation.

"Wait, shinigami were you actually trying to make a jok-!?"

WHOOSH!

And they were gone in a flash from the cave for the second and last time that morning.

* * *

><p><span>Goodbye to Los Seis Pilares<span>

**Segunda Cárcel  
>11:50.10 A.M.<strong>

Mindless Gillian marched through the arena width passageways in orderly lines led by sentients. Gradually, there was one mindless Gillian aligned with each column of cells, knocking out the weakened inmates inside once and for all with spiritual pressure. The repaired areas of Segunda Cárcel had been done with actual sound architectural integrity compared to the horribly dimensioned cells from before.

The largest collection of mindless Gillian however seemed to be in the now famed 'Passageway C', as they weren't yet aligning with the cells as was happening in the other passageways and subdivisions throughout the gaol. It was as if they were waiting for something.

Suddenly a flash appeared near the very end of the passageway and the now colorless thin threads used for Sentan Hakuja unraveled, revealing Alma Secta with their special passenger in tow.

Immediately they took in their surroundings, looking right in front of themselves.

"T-THIS?" started Chad as he and Orihime took in the sight.

There right in front of them was the very cell they'd broken out of early that morning. Practically untouched during the repairs, still badly dimensioned, glass still broken, the massive amount of negación'd earth from the town south of Karakura still sitting there right where he and Orihime had jumped off of it to break out of the cell.

Ashido didn't seem to notice their taking in of their arrival point as he spoke.

"Her reiatsu is so low now that even after homing in directly on it by using her own spirit thread we still went off a ways. She's down there you guys," he pointed to the left down a steep incline with an open cell at the end where no more cells lined the walls on the way down as if it were the end of a dinner table. It was effectively the end of the passageway and lots of sentient Gillian were on each side of the entrance.

"That's my cell!" shouted Abdul as the lines of mindless Gillian walked by them, now aligning with the cells with the help of other sentients. As his cell and the path leading up to it originally had been uniquely architecturally sound in the first place, it was no different now and was actually an exact replica. "But how!? That kid destroyed it and blew the back wall of it all the way back there!" exclaimed Abdul trying to gesture to indicate what exactly 'way back there' meant.

"I take it mindless Gillian are great laborers. These guys really wasted no time just like we thought," said Chad beginning to walk down the incline.

"Adjuchas, why is your cell so much smaller than mine?" asked Ashido with stoicity.

"Shut it shinigami," responded Abdul. He was still mad that the shinigamni'd had a palace of a cell in comparison to him and the two humans. In fact, Ashido had heard his complaining about it before Tsubaki had broken the shinigami out of his cell. This guy was just messing with him.

"Lía-sama is inside," spoke a towering sentient, apparently of the avian adjuchas. With the height of the cell entrance not even coming past their white pointy boot-like feet, they all looked fidgety with worry, as more of them sonído'd in from within the gaol, apparently at both sensing Alma Secta's arrival and at being finished with helping Zoréno's sentients align the mindless Gillian, leaving it to those guys to make sure everything stayed in place so that they could be closer to their ailing master in her seemingly last moments.

Abdul mentally scoffed at the dramatics as they all walked inside the shockingly now lit cell, _"Not just the gaol itself, but even the cells had lights in them! What was that kid's freakin' malfunction?" _complained Abdul referencing Xodri's lack of utilizing the lighting in his gaol. They'd learned as much about the gaol itself when they came back to break out Ashido, but to now learn even the individual cells had lights all along sort of irked him considering he'd spent almost a week in his own.

Walking through the now glassless entrance they entered the familiar drab three-walled cell(with the usually closed off special glass barrier entrance being the fourth wall). The first thing they saw were two hollows standing in front of what seemed to be a raised platform, similar to the ones found in the Dispatch loading stations. At this the messenger hollow who'd been brought along with Sentan Hakuja squeezed through in between Ashido and Abdul from behind and went up to them.

"Soledad! Jirona!" she shouted hugging her smaller teammates.

"Geez Iniza you act like you haven't seen us in months! It's only been like an hour and a half. They chose you to go 'cause you're the faste—mmMMuuu!," the hollow called Jirona managed to get out while in the suffocated hug with Soledad simply laughing.

Alma Secta watched this exchange with blank stares before a shadow twitched in the corner, and the owner of it spoke before revealing themselves.

"Well now, and here I thought you were all no-shows," the weakened Lía Halconero spoke without looking up, sitting down against the back-left corner of the cell.

"Thought we weren't gonna show? We got here within like ten seconds of that girl alerting us. Now let's get on with this so called 'debriefing', we probably barely even have nine minutes left and we still have no idea how this 'shipping' even works!" complained Abdul getting right down to business.

At this, Orihime imagined hollows fitting the 'trucker' stereotype driving eighteen-wheeler trucks filled with hollow prisoners across the desert in a giant caravan/convoy.

However, Lía didn't particularly take to Abdul's tone and struggled to compose herself.

"Shut up, sit down, and be quiet because I'm only going to explain things once," she managed cooly.

"Yeah, and that's because you'll probably keel over and _die _mid-sentence-" retorted Abdul resulting in an interrupting tri-elbow jab from the rest of the Sectans ironically mid-sentence.

Soledad saw the adjuchas warden trying to keep her calm with mental mantras and decided to jump in.

"Eh, um..allow me to explain please Lía-sama," she asked in her meek voice.

"Yeah, yeah go ahead," answered a sour Lía swaying her hand passively, "You four!" she shouted changing her voice instantly and getting Alma Secta's attention, "Let Squad #223 Captain Soledad Narvola explain!" she declared as said hollow then turned to face the Sectans with her now respectively crossed armed and akimbo teammates.

"Ok…so um shipping," she began, getting her thoughts in order before clasping her hands together, "Alright, so you know that unfortunately by their nature, normal garganta can only be used to travel to and from Hueco Mundo. Because of this it's like Aloban Vibrerra said, 'One doesn't simply make a garganta to a separate part of Hueco Mundo. You must go through another area first,'" she quoted, "Now whether that area is the human world, the Soul Society or even the Dangai is up to the creator of the garganta. However, La Pirámide finds all these 'destinations' troublesome for obvious reasons involving shinigami and the blatant danger of the Dangai. So they instead managed to exploit the troublesome limitations of the garganta to their own advantage, manufacturing an entirely new method that in everyday speech we call 'shipping', but is officially called 'Transgarganta'.

"'Transgarganta'?" questioned Orihime.

"Yes, you heard right. And despite all the options being troublesome, they had to choose one of them. And out of them all they chose to exploit the most nostalgic option," she continued, "The human world," she finished allowing that to sink in.

All of Alma Secta had a range of expressions and or body reactions that signified a mixture of shock, alarm, incredulousness, and dubiety, and above and among all, confusion.

Ever-perceptive Soledad saw this all as clear as day and was amused.

"Well out of all three options, the human world _is _the most 'nostalgic' for obvious reasons. But first let me explain how Transgarganta even works you know?" she chirped.

"Now you may think that _of all places_, the _human world_, would be the most monitored besides Soul Society itself and that the Dangai which transcends space-time, albeit dangerous, would be much easier to do anything under the radar because of those exact attributes. Ironically the shinigami better monitor the Dangai than the human world, and it's _not _just a recent thing, it's always been so," she explained, emphasizing that last tidbit directly for Ashido's knowledge.

"But how is that? Because La Pirámide proves it by knowing the extent of the human world and selecting coordinates in numerous 'viable areas' to carry out their Interdimensional Transgarganta Network(IGT). The base's function starts when our Gillian rather than creating the usual kūmon, are coerced to do mass garganta in the spots of the ceiling in each cell," explained Soledad pointing upwards at the familiar rectangular protrusion coming out of the ceiling as she, Jirona and Iniza looked up at it.

_"That's what that was for?" _thought Chad. He'd figured it was just stylistic or more bizarre architecture. He'd barely paid it any mind; their cell had been so dark back then. And now that they mentioned it, the ceiling protrusion was sort of parallel to the raised platform on the ground. The negación'd earth back in their cell must've been sitting on top of that.

"The gargantas then all open up together at the assigned 'viable area', forming almost sort of a garganta coordinate plane in the same layout as the cells they're opened up from," continued Soledad, "However at that point, La Pirámide is already ready with their own gargantas which have been made to the same coordinates that they themselves gave us in the first place; this way their garganta exits line up parallel to all of ours. So as both ours and their gargantas open at the scheduled time to the specified coordinates, _they _shoot a negación from each of theirs, connecting to each of ours as the prisoners or cargo are transferred up to Headquarters swiftly and efficiently," she finished, proud of her explanatory skills before she took in Alma Secta's reactions.

"Um….do you understand?" she asked hesitantly sweatdropping. Was her explanation too technical?

_"'Prisoners' or 'cargo'? She didn't say that as if she were calling the prisoners 'cargo' and that the two words were interchangeable, but instead said it as if there's a difference. But if all of us were 'prisoners' then what could possibly be 'cargo'?" _thought Chad as he made to ask his question only for Orihime to speed blitz him.

"Um…just what are these 'viable areas' Narvola-san?" asked a concerned Orihime.

Surprised Soledad simply looked at the girl before responding, "You'll see for yourself one of the _many _possible areas when traveling up the negación between the two gargantas. Whether you see anything or not though depends on how close they have their garganta positioned parallel to ours. Too close, and right on exiting our garganta, you'll be in headquarters like a direct portal. That was the initial concept after all, but who knows what they'll do. All we have are the coordinates they give us to use."

"So it's a new place in the human world they're using each time?"

"Not exactly. Assigned areas are shuffled and recycled among all parts of La Pirámide, and headquarters is always adding new coordinates to the overall database. Personally we squads never hear much about the coordinates of shipping since Dispatch and El Centro's sentients were in charge of that to relay to the gaols, but from what I have heard, we've always gotten some place near-"

HAAACK!

The sound came from the avian adjuchas in her corner as all turned to see the red plasma now streaming from her mouth.

"Is..there-any particular reason," she began, "that you're staring at me like I'm your _dog_ that just died girl?!" she screamed directly at Orihime causing the Rikka wielder to look away.

"No it's nothing..it-"

"Tch! Don't waste your healing power on me!"

"Eh!?" The shock of her declaration caused the girl to look back at her former opponent.

"You heard me! Your healing power! I've seen what it can do. In fact, I think I finally understand how you all's pet idiot Tarragó managed to somehow get his arm back as crazy as that is...Everything that's happened, the chain of events…it all makes sense," she trailed somberly.

"But there's no time or need left to heal and replace my reiatsu with your weird powers. Save your energy. You'll need it for La Pirámide," she finished lowly, yet with unfiltered raw emotion in her voice.

"Oh, are you done? Okay my turn," began Abdul as he sighed before continuing, "Yeeeeeeaahh here's the thing birdy. I'm not buying your sudden docile, reserved act. I'm not buying it at all."

"Good, because we're non-profit," she managed respond to the confusion of everyone present.

"What the!? See! That's what I'm talking about. Now you're trying to make bad jokes?! You know exactly what I'm getting at. We kill your brother, I eat your brother, we kill all your friends, I eat the ones I killed; now you're about to die and you're helping us? Even going so far as to trick your 'La Pirámide headquarters' and not inform them of anything that happened here and scaring the squads and those Gillian into keeping it that way by threatening them with _me_; the brother-eater person?! What're you _really _up to?! Drop the act!" he demanded, venting his suspicions he had since before the 'intermission' of waiting to be called back for shipping.

"Oh. So it looks like the cold-blooded monster Tarragó has a conscience after all," she responded monotonously without looking his way.

This irked Abdul to no end as he managed to calm down. It wasn't right to be getting upset. Making people mad was his thing after all.

"I know this may be difficult since you're a bird and have to consequently deal with your miniaturized bird-brain and all, but stop getting your 'C' words mixed up! 'Conscience' is not the same word as 'Confused' which is what I actually am because your actions don't add up Lía!" he voiced, using her actual name for the first time, showing genuineness.

At this Lía mentally smiled as if she'd just won some mind game only she knew they'd been playing.

"It's nothing really," she began," Just that before 'Los Seis Pilares' existed as a base, we were a simple team of sentient Gillian Menos Grande led by "'Black Beacon' Celvia the Adjuchas. Xodri and I were the last addition to the group and we all caught up to Celvia in no time, becoming adjuchas alongside her as equals due to her sacrifices for us. While we were Gillian she often joked on our height saying we were like tall pillars, but after we all were adjuchas, the six of us were then 'the six pillars'. Each of us, a pillar united as one.

_"Los Seis Pilares,"_ thought Orihime in understanding.  
>"<em>Well now. So my 'Cinco Pilares' joke earlier wasn't that far off after all," <em>thought a newly amused Abdul.

"We roamed the desert for who knows how long, simply existing and surviving together in that circular lifestyle Aloban Vibrerra talked about until one day that changed forever. It's a shared story among many members of La Pirámide. That day you were told to 'join or die'. That if you joined you'd ascend higher than you ever could alone. That united, everyone could ascend together; to never fear for your existence or face starvation ever again, and to reach a new paradigm in **_hollowdom _**itself. This was La Pirámide's promise. And yet Xodri being the kid he was wasn't interested in any of that. We thought he was short-sighted, too naïve and too blissfully ignorant. Now it reminds me of a saying I've heard before, 'Sometimes a child's unmolded innocence is wiser than an adult's set in stone conformity,'" she recalled the quote with a glum chuckle.

"Still we joined," she briskly continued, "La Pirámide trained us and taught us things we never could've fathomed. Before we were but animals, but then we had been enlightened, and above all we got the rare luxury of not being split up. We got to stay together and actually increased in strength as promised, and eventually we got a new assignment," she went on now shakily holding up an index finger to make a point.

"_We _would become the assimilators. The ones that say 'join or die', we would have dominion over the savages of the desert we once supposedly were," she said in her familiar dramatic voice as if reminiscing proudly.

"And so this satellite branch of La Pirámide, 'Los Seis Pilares' was born. Naturally we named it after ourselves and our 'unity', but slowly I guess we found ourselves consumed with rising higher together in La Pirámide's eyes. I guess we felt since we were united in that goal that we hadn't lost our own 'unity'. Yet we _as a group_ had become more 'unified' toward La Pirámide than we had to each other. It took one of the pillars to fall to make me realize that," she said referencing Xodri with her voice cracking. One could hear a pin drop before-

CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP!

Applause from you know who.

"Bravo, bravo, nice obligatory back-story and whatnot, but stop avoiding the point," said Abdul before his voice became sinister, "**_WHAT _**are you up to?" he asked darkly.

Yet this only encouraged Lía. "Ohoho, but if you hadn't interrupted you'd see that I circularly segued right to the point. 'What am I up to?' And Squad 223, you gladly help me out which I'm eternally grateful for, but I can tell even you wonder why I help the likes of these people, Tarragó in particular," she went on as Soledad and her teammates shifted uncomfortably.

"Again, 'It's nothing really'," she smugly quoted, literally circling back to the point as promised, being her opening statement. This almost caused Abdul to truly start charging a cero this time, but he killed the thought.

"Just that I figure if anyone could disrupt La Pirámide and what it stands for, it's you people. And if you fail-HA! Well then the people responsible for my brother's death die and our base would've still technically completed operations. You see, either way I'm quite pleased," she at last revealed to a glowering Abdul.

"And Tarragó," she continued causing him to widen his eyes in slight surprise, "Even if you accomplish the first path, still one day you'll get your due. Either you starve and regress or another hollow devours part of you and you stagnate or they devour all of you which would be even better. Or you might just get straight up killed or die even some other way. It's coming and you can't stop it," said a now defiant Lía.

With her counterbalancing smugness gone and now replaced with defiance this in turn fueled and allowed Abdul's own smugness to re-surge.

"Ha! Challenge Accepted! But personally I'm still stuck on the fact that even before you joined this La Pirámide, you freaks had still named yourselves. Celvia and Zoréno had me thinking the 'Pirámide people' were responsible for all your Adam-complexes, but you people had it beforehand!" shouted Abdul. Unfortunately most of the decibels went down in Ashido's ear.

"Adjuchas, its long since been established that hollows naming their groups and techniques is a common hollow custom," managed an even-toned Ashido.

"So what does that make me? A quartz tree?! I've never heard of hollows doing this crap until I came across these apparently new-age geniuses on the desert," mocked Abdul, "And 'hollow custom'? What, does Hueco Mundo suddenly have a culture now? Am I on the fringe of society? No because there is none! Anarchy is the rule here," he finished to a chuckle/scoff from Lía.

"After we beat you back then, we _were _wondering what backwards section of the desert you came from Tarragó," she admitted before pausing, "It won't be long now," she finished, laying her head against the wall.

Everyone knew she'd just made a sort of double entendre. One, that shipping was about to _start_, and two, that her life was about to _stop_.

Ashido surprisingly started walking over to her, yet she didn't lift her head off the wall in response. "You know, you don't have to die like this. If you're cleansed by a shinigami's zanpakutō, you can live on in Soul Society. I can make it painless and you won't remember life as a hollow, but at least you'll live on as you," finished Ashido stepping in front of her.

Lía moved her eyes to observe the fabled gazelle-masked shinigami, _"Heh. 'Cleansed' huh? For him to so innocently voice such negative connotation. As if hollows were dirty…and yet…!"_

"Well, you specifically weren't involved in Xodri's death," she trailed, lifting her head off the wall and sitting up before a pause was held and the edges of her mouth behind the ebony beak of her mask slowly curled up, "You know what?! Whatever, I'm a spontaneous type of gal! Do it shinigami!"

Abruptly, Ashido thrust his hand in front of her mask as her golden eyes dilated.

_"Tanma Otoshi," _he thought as his hand glowed white and Lía instantly lost consciousness, eyes slamming shut. Before anyone could wonder, she was already sliced sitting down from what was left of her left collar bone down to the hip bone. Her mask and skeletal hollow bones disintegrated revealing a girl with olive brown skin, long jet black hair, and as she opened them, piercing green eyes that filled with recognition before she dispersed into spirit particles onwards to Soul Society. One could hear the hollow cries of her sentient Gillian outside of the cell who undoubtedly had sensed their master's willing end in such a fashion.

Everyone besides Abdul marveled at the spectacle.

_"Looks like the shinigami fanclub just got its charter renewed," _he joked in a mental deadpan.

Ashido sheathed Kamokuen and turned back around with body language that basically meant, 'And that's what it's all about kiddos!'

It was already guaranteed with five of the adjuchas gone. The sentients were trying to manipulate their vestigial influence on them as long as possible. And with now no adjuchas at all left it was only a matter of time before the mindless Gillian of the base now all began rioting similar to the prior prison riots.

It was Soledad who broke the silence, eyes suddenly widening before turning around to face the raised platform.

"Get on you four, its time," she stated as Alma Secta briskly walked over (Abdul using sonído only to find Ashido calmly claiming he'd been there before him with shunpo which of course was blasphemy. Orihime and Chad on the other hand simply stepped up onto the platform together).

"Hey wait, what about you three? Aren't you supposed to be at the other gaol?!" asked Orihime in sudden realization.

After the initial surprise at the sincerity of the question, Soledad's and her teammate's eyes twinkled.

"Heh," was all Soledad replied in her meek voice to Alma Secta's then understanding reactions.

**UUURRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAR !**

The mindless Gillian all screamed in unison as a garganta opened up within the dimensions of the rectangular ceiling protrusion and a golden beam shot down completely encompassing everything in its path. Alma Secta found themselves rising slowly at first, but gradually increasing in speed as the platform actually was ripped out the ground as a new one surprisingly rose in return. Eventually they approached the point of no return, beginning to rise past the garganta opening.

"This is it," said an anticipating Orihime.

"Yeah," answered the three males in some way or fashion as they looked up at the shrouded path that awaited them.

Soledad looked up at the departing Alma Secta for the last time.

_"Has your mask changed any? I mean, it's been so long since I've seen you…and… And with the way things are now it'll probably be longer. Cuarta Cárcel is shipping everyone away right now as I speak, but Jirona, Iniza and I, we chose to not join the others. We were the only ones who did so. To stay and start new lives away from La Pirámide's influence that is. But do know that I truly believe we'll see each other once more. I will stay safe, but you must as well, because some frightening people are coming your way," _she thought as Alma Secta finished rising into the garganta.

_"Until we meet again,…"_

After a few more seconds all the gargantas closed within Segunda Cárcel and Cuarta Cárcel simultaneously.

_"Sister."_

Ironically contrasting to the prior 'order', chaos seemed to be a quiet phenomenon.

* * *

><p><strong>Makeshift Made-At-Last-Second Low Budget Arc-Epilogue:<strong> Mindless Gillian meander into the forest. Sentients create kūmons to 'viable areas' agreed upon by each other, and Squad 223? They'd jokingly agreed upon a new name for themselves as their garganta began to close behind them. **Los Difuntos**

* * *

><p><strong>OmakeSide-story:** "Mission Complete!: How Squads were retrieved after completing a mission in Hueco Mundo"

Up to now ,you've heard of how the squads went on missions and everything else. But you only saw the unique process of retrieving a squad when Squad 336 got negacióned from the living world. That was a special case one time thing, because the squads normally did all their missions within Hueco Mundo.

"Extracting." The name of the process which uses an amended Transgarganta process. By exploiting the way hollows can be attracted to the human world from sensing reiatsu of potential meals, the Gillian monitor of a squad's mission creates a garganta or Kūmon at whatever one of the "viable spots" in the living(human) world that the base was assigned to utilize at the time. The squad or solo scout(s) senses their monitor's reiatsu in the human world and creates a garganta to that very spot, allowing a Negación to be shot through and connect the two gargantas, bringing the squad or individual hollow back up to their loading platform at their monitor's station. Often squads or soldiers come back with victims. The monitor of the mission at Dispatch gives off a special standardized wavelength of spiritual pressure alerting the gaols whose respective workers respond accordingly. These victims turned prisoners are then immediately transported to cells in any of the four gaols using the more traditional Transgarganta process except using a reverse-negación originating from the monitor at Dispatch. (In the case of Segunda Cárcel where there were no sentients and just Xodri and his mindless Gillian, Xodri literally trained and conditioned his mindless to perform the tasks. And even then he was fully able of doing it all by himself) Orihime and Chad were special cases and were transported to Segunda Cárcel personally by some of Zoréno's sentients.

**Omake/Side-story:** "S.O.S.! Distress Call: How exactly were the Dispatch workers going to 'send' that S.O.S. if they had?"

The same concept as Transgarganta applies to the S.O.S. Hollows can be attracted to reiatsu in the living world. So what do the distressed people sending the signal do? Open up a passageway to the living world in a viable area and let off a standardized wavelength of reiatsu. If you haven't noticed, I've had some of the adjuchas this arc do standardized/specialized reiatsu wavelengths for certain things(see Zoréno in chapter 14 for just one of a few examples). So after this, depending on the situation and the corresponding reiatsu wavelength used, Headquarters would respond accordingly. As far as specialized/standardized reiatsu wavelength's go, I'd like to think La Pirámide has a whole catalog of them.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

**Chapter Started on paper: July 27th 12:00 PM  
>Chapter Finished on paper: July 27th 11:10 PM-August 2nd 5:59 PM<br>Chapter Typed: September 11th, 4:25 PM-September 15****th****, 6:36 PM  
>Revisions: September 17th, 1:00 PM; December 24th, 11:20 AM; December 30th, 11:56 PM est.<strong>

*"On-rails.": I've mentioned it before in previous Author Notes, but I continuously wonder if the people from other countries, who aren't native English speakers will get some of the colloquialisms in this story. I know 'on rails' is sort of 'to the point' as far as definition, but I still wonder if non-native speakers will get that when I had Abdul say 'on-rails', I'm referring to 'on rail' simulations; like 'on-rail' videogames for example.

**Tsubaki as voice of reason. Goes back to chapter nine when he claims that he is.

**General**(updated 12/31/12)

The Satellite (mini)Arc is finally complete, having started since chapter nine. Chapter subtitle Inverted Stripes 2 refers again to Chad(Tiger) and follows up from the last Inverted Stripes section of chapter twenty-six. The second chapter sub-title Goodbye to Los Seis Pilares is self-explanatory, as is the main chapter title of "Transgarganta", provided you actually read the chapter instead of skipping.

I hope this chapter began to explain some things revolving Orihime's kidō usage(since chapter seven) and shunpo usage(since chapter seventeen). 'Jū Kyūseishu' is an interesting concept. Speaking of things Orihime learned that Chad didn't know about, she still has some explaining to do to him as far as explaining what exactly she was up to in certain parts of chapter six. But if you've noticed, Chad is pretty patient and just makes mental notes to remember for later discussion.

I also hope this chapter set the broader foundation for further development for both Orihime and Chad; _especially_ and _specifically _Chad. You can tell this chapters beginning scene was focused on him and bringing added closure and development to his fight with Klarradi along with looking to the future. Back in chapter 26's author note I mentioned how "I'll touch more on the parallelism and dichotomy of the two around chapter 29's Author Note section". By 'of the two', I of course mean Orihime and Chad, and this just so happens to be the promised chapter 29 author note. I mentioned in chapter 26's author note how both did something in their battles they couldn't control properly. Orihime with her mock-cero and Chad with Kidō. And that was something specific instead of a more general example which I'll get into next.

In _general_, from the arc's outset after chapter eight I wanted this dichotomy to evolve from what little we saw in their spar with each other in chapter 7. Chad's attacks are very 'explosive', while Orihime's offensive attack is rather 'precise'. Even before the spar, the river splitting scene in chapter 7 was just one direct example of this. From there I wanted to build a foundation where both would increase in strength, but have different ways of doing so. To be blunt, Chad being in Hueco Mundo means it's influence could potentially be an advantage for him. Orihime on the other hand, has no such advantage. She's not raw power like Chad or infinite reiatsu like Ichigo. She has a very moderate reiatsu amount and not much 'raw', 'brute' power at all. She has all her Rikka to worry about and techniques to develop, while Chad _conversely_ is pretty straightforward with how he develops his power.

This viewpoint of Orihime being at a disadvantage compared to Chad is contrasting to his viewpoint shown in this chapter where he is actually questioning himself. Orihime since chapter seven and throughout this arc has often measured herself against Chad as well in return. This 'continuing mutual recognition' between the two was seen most recently within chapter 26(Orihime realizing Chad's speed increase, and the devastation Chad caused in his fight, Chad's shock at how she'd incapacitated Lía) and chapter 27(Orihime seeing Chad's speed firsthand rather than before when they merely crashed into each other, and Chad's surprise at Tsubaki's display of shunpo and kidō). Then of course there are the Rikka's surprising declarations in chapter 10 regarding Chad as Orihime's main rival, and if you interpret it this way, an "obstacle" or standard to not fall behind.  
>In the end, both are on the path forward relative to their own developments and each has something unique about them that will continue to increase their ability. The opening conversation between Chad, Abdul, and Ashido established that much I would hope.<p>

Quick Notes(commentary added as of 12/31/12):

-Ashido mentioned back in chapter 26 how he could've used Sentan Hakuja to go right to any of the battles by combining it with Reiraku. I actually had him demonstrate this exactly in this chapter by his using Lía's spirit thread in proxy of the usual bandages to perform Sentan Hakuja with. Pretty cool, don't you think?  
>-Yes Klarradi's spirit thread was 'bizarrely double banded' because of the baby joey hollow.<br>-'Passageway C': In case you forgot, it is the name of the "hallway" Chad, Orihime, and Abdul's cells were on. This passageway was arena-sized in width, yet nothing more than a hallway in comparison to the whole gaol.  
>-Chad and O's untouched cell(because it was still 'evidence'): Yeah I decided that Zoréno and his Dispatch sentients decided to leave Orihime and Chad's cell untouched for "evidence" instead of repairing it like they did the rest of the gaol seeing as Zoréno mentioned noticing traces of their reiatsu in the gaol back in chapter 14; Orihime's in particular due to her chain-slicing of the cells with Tsubaki. Not that Zoréno somehow magically pieced the puzzle together at that time. He was simply confused and hadn't pieced everything together until sometime post-chapter 15 if you remember correctly.<p>

-So back in chapter 26's author note I hinted one last group of previously seen minor OCs which finally made a re-appearance this chapter in the form of Squad #223 headed by Soledad Narvola(first seen chapter 11). And her two previously unnamed teammates were there too and got named! Jirona and Iniza! Iniza was the messenger to Alma Secta. The actual "name" of this squad was never revealed, but as you see in the (made-at-last-second)epilogue, they sort of made up a new one as a joke. Whether they'll seriously use it is a mystery wherever they end up at. Oh and Soledad apparently has a sister.

-I added the part about Celvia joking on her teammates's Gillian heights during revisions. I literally just inserted randomly these exact words in between the ones already there: "...While we were Gillian she often joked on our height saying we were like tall pillars, but after we all were adjuchas, the six of us were then 'the six pillars'. Each of us, a pillar united as one..." This but meager example shows that seemingly tantamount small details and thematic concepts to the story arc like that quote included can literally be added or inserted on a whim and it in perfectly with the basic frame of what's already in place. As a former non-author I remember questioning how authors made such complex stories, but now I understand in a way that it's not as "systematic" as it seems on the outside looking in.

-The spell Ashido used this chapter, Tanma Otoshi; it was used by Shinji on Ichigo in the canon in case you've forgotten.

QUOTE: "...Truthfully, if and only if things keep going at this rate, I have to predict that your glass ceiling is gonna end up being much higher than hers. But you better not let that go to your head, not just because it's a conditional prediction but 'cause even if it ends up being right, glass ceilings are glass! They can be shattered!"  
>-This is Abdul with one of my favorite lines of his, because his words are so true.<p>

QUOTE:_ "_Well now. So my 'Cinco Pilares' joke earlier wasn't that far off after__ all,"  
>-Abdul referencing his line at the end of chapter 14.<p>

QUOTE:_ "Because it sounds strangely like…,"  
>-<em>Ashido's quote.

QUOTE: She seemed to have healed herself but strangely missed some specific areas completely for some odd reason.  
>-This was narration. It's referencing how Orihime realized Sōten Kisshun had spotty healing for some weird reason back in chapters 17 and 21.<p>

QUOTE: "Tch. It seems like you're suggesting shinigami can't have opposite gender zanpakutō. I didn't think 'power manifestation' had gender bias," quipped Abdul getting over the momentary revelation. Whether Ashido was surprised the adjuchas seemed knowledgeable on zanpakutō wasn't apparent as he responded.  
>-Interesting that Abdul seems knowledgable on shinigami powers. I wonder if that'll come up later in some form, or if he just simply knows?<p>

QUOTE: "Wait, shinigami were you actually trying to make a jok-!?"  
>-Abdul's line to Ashido right before Sentan Hakuja activates. Yeah, I'm thinking Ashido made an unintentional joke about Lía's decrepit looking spiritual thread with his "She's barely hanging on by a thread at this point," line.<p>

[Quote commentary added as of 12/31/12]

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><p><span>Remember this from the Chapter Eight author's note?<span>

**"Chaps 1-8: Expository Arc: 'Acquisition of Unwavering Resolve'(aka 'Resolve Arc')**

**Chaps 9-?: Main Arc made out of multiple mini-arcs: (Name of the arc revealed next chapter and mini-arcs to be revealed when the time comes for each one)"  
><strong>

Time to update it:

**Expository Arc**

Chaps 1-8: 'Unwavering Resolve'

**'The Pyramid Syndicate' Arc**

Chaps 9-29: 'The Satellite' (Part of the grander arc of 'The Pyramid Syndicate')

Chaps 30-?: 'Order of La Pirámide' (Further continuation of the grander arc of 'The Pyramid Syndicate')**  
><strong>

**** NOTE:**** As you can see from this update from what was in chapter eight author's note, these plans are tentative and subject to change as each chapter gets written and the plot evolves and gets fleshed out mid-writing. Arc subsections could get shifted or split up. Remember I thought the Satellite mini-arc would end around chapter sixteen partially due to how obscenely long my chapters were back then)"

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><p><span>Character Profiles Part 3: 'Los Seis Pilares Edition'<span>

In the first character profile segment in chapter eight, we did a look at the group of hollows known as **Los Tranquilizantes**. (Meanwhile chapter 27's Author Note was sort of a 'follow-up/extra edition' of those chapter eight profiles, but not an actual continuation of the Character Profile Series.) In chapter ten we looked at another group called the **Shun Shun Rikka**. It's now time to showcase a group called** Los Seis Pilares**. And this time, original concept notes will be incorporated into the character profiles just like last chapter 27's author note did so that there will be no need for 'follow-up/extra edition' segments on them in the future.  
>Remember the guide from chapter 27, "<strong>[o]<strong>(insert notes here)**[/o]**" stands for 'original conceptual notes'.

[Coming some time mid-hiatus]


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